A 
A 

UC  SOU! 

0 
0 

1 

4 

FHERN  Rl 

5 
2 

5 

M  LIBRAR 

8 
6 

FACILI 

9 

— I 

LB 
1051 


M54   Meredith  - 


fj.^f.dUC^tiQn-.lL 


Southern  Branch 
of  the 

University  of  California 

Los  Angeles 


Form  L  I 


LB 
1051 

•r54 


'i2f^ 


BiterjSiDe  CDucational  jHonograpi^jS 

EDITED  BY  HENRY  SUZZALLO 

PRESIDENT    OF   THE    UNIVERSITY    OF    WASHINGTON,   SEATTLE 


EDUCATIONAL  BEARINGS  OF 
MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 


CHRISTABEL   M.  MEREDITH 


HOUGHTON   MIFFLIN   COMPANY 

BOSTON,    NEW   YORK    AND   CHICAGO 


losi 

CONTENTS 

Editor's  Introduction       5 

I.  The  Nature  of  Instinct g 

II.  The     Modification    of     Instinct:     Purposive 

Action       28 

III.  The  Modification  of  Instinct:  Mental  Growth    46 

IV.  The  Growth  of  Habits  and  Sentiments  ...    63 
V.  Environment  and  Suggestion 78 

VL  Experiment  in  Education 95 

VII.  Special  Studies  in  Connection  with  Memory  .  in 
VIII.  Special  Studies  in  Connection  with  Adolescence  126 
Outline 139 


EDITOR'S  INTRODUCTION 

The  reform  of  the  teaching  process  is  a  somewhat  difficult 
matter.  All  who  are  specially  charged  with  the  improvement 
of  classroom  practice  will  testify  to  the  fact.  The  difficulty  is 
excessive  at  the  present  hour  because  we  have  arrived  at  a  point 
where  tinkering  with  the  various  details  of  traditional  procedure 
no  longer  gives  a  considerable  result.  Educational  reconstruc- 
tion must  be  made  far  reaching  if  it  is  really  to  become  effective 
in  a  fundamental  way.  It  must  greatly  extend  the  range  of 
experiences  which  the  school  makes  personal  to  the  child  and 
provide  a  more  vital  foundation  for  the  acquisition  of  such 
skills  as  are  eminently  necessary  in  adult  life.  The  modern 
program  calls  for  greater  vitality  and  breadth  in  the  education 
of  youth.  Success  in  such  an  expansion  of  educational  policy 
involves  a  radical  change  in  point  of  view. 

The  needed  change  in  point  of  view  will  come  more  readily  if 
the  teacher  recognizes  the  restricted  field  in  which  dominant 
teaching  traditions  have  originated.  In  function  the  first 
schools  were  exceedingly  narrow  as  compared  with  modern  in- 
stitutions. There  is  no  human  necessity  for  which  the  present 
educational  system  does  not  aspire  to  train  young  men  and 
women.  Its  scope  is  as  broad  as  human  hfe;  its  field  has  the  width 
of  human  nature.  The  earliest  schools,  those  which  set  the  first 
teaching  traditions,  were  reading  and  writing  schools.  They 
taught  only  the  formal  arts  associated  with  the  printed  or  writ- 
ten symbol.  The  provision  of  broad  and  vitalizing  first-hand  ex- 
periences was  no  part  of  their  task.  Nor  did  they  teach  through 
an  oral  exchange  of  adventures,  save  in  the  most  incidental  way. 
The  ordinary  social  contacts  of  the  children  were  supposed  to 
give  these.  The  school  aimed  to  do  the  few  things  which  ordi- 
nary human  contacts  could  not  do ;  it  read  a  meaning  into  a  sign 


6  EDITOR'S   INTRODUCTION 

or  gave  form  to  the  idea  which  the  person  desired  to  communi- 
cate across  time  or  distance.  Its  central  task  was  to  make  Uter- 
ates  out  of  young  illiterates.  The  subjects  with  which  it  was 
concerned  w^ere  chiefly  formal.  Its  methods  were  memoriter. 
From  such  narrow  traditional  sanctions  the  modern  educator 
has  been  trying  to  develop  an  effective  school  system.  His  as- 
piration has  been  greatly  interfered  with.  He  requires  a  con- 
scious and  thoroughgoing  philosophy  as  a  substitute  for  inade- 
quate and  unrationalized  traditional  sanctions. 

It  is  not  enough  for  the  teacher  to  escape  the  narrowness  of 
craft  tradition.  In  the  teaching  of  youth,  the  adult  must  escape 
hiniself.  Our  whole  tendency  in  dealing  with  human  nature  is 
to  read  ourselves  into  others.  Grown  people  in  the  contacts  of 
society  or  commerce  will  correct  each  other's  misconceptions  for 
the  time  being,  but  it  is  really  surprising  how  persistently  people 
go  through  the  world  thinking  that  people  are  substantially  like 
themselves.  When  adults  deal  with  children,  the  error  of  such 
expectations  is  shown  up  less  clearly.  In  the  presence  of  adult 
folks,  little  boys  and  girls  do  not  show  all  that  there  is  of  them- 
selves. Often  they  conceal  themselves  under  an  obedience  which 
gives  the  required  overt  act,  but  in  which  there  is  no  heart  and 
soul.  Thus,  the  adult's  misconceptions  as  to  childhood  and  youth 
do  not  receive  even  the  ordinary  corrections  which  characterize 
adult  relations.  The  teacher  needs  to  remember  always  that 
there  is  a  large  gap  between  people.  To  this  truth  must  be  added 
another,  that  the  gap  between  adults  and  children  increases 
the  younger  children  are.  With  these  two  safeguarding  con- 
ceptions, a  sympathetic  mind  will  go  far  toward  making  daily 
contacts  with  youth  render  greater  wisdom.  But  the  final  appeal 
must  be  made  to  scientific  methods.  The  science  of  psychology 
must  be  made  to  render  service  in  the  interpretation  and  con- 
trol of  human  nature. 

Every  teacher  should  be  something  of  a  psychologist.  It  is 
his  knowledge  of  human  nature  which  gives  precision  to  his 
theory  of  human  control  and  brings  accuracy  to  his  technique 
of  education.  The  analytic  cast  of  mind  should  not,  of  course, 


EDITOR'S  INTRODUCTION  7 

crowd  out  the  sympathetic  and  artful  attitude  which  is  always 
dominant  with  great  teachers,  but  it  is  a  capacity  which  every 
teacher  should  have  for  use  on  preparatory  and  critical  occa- 
sions, when  theoretic  considerations  are  important  in  arranging 
for  levels  of  action  more  effective  than  have  been  known  before. 
It  is  important  then  that  whatever  we  know  of  human  nature 
in  scientific  terms  be  made  available  for  the  teacher.  The  facts 
which  have  a  special  pertinency  for  the  teacher  should  be  col- 
lected and  arranged  so  as  to  indicate  their  intimate  bearings  on 
teaching  skill.  Such  an  application  of  psychology  is  here  offered 
to  those  who  instruct  youth.  The  compass  of  the  work  is  small, 
but  a  fine  discrimination  in  choice  and  organization  has  made 
brevity  a  virtue  unaccompanied  by  its  usual  shortcomings. 


PREFACE 

The  aim  of  this  book  is  to  give  a  brief  account  of  some 
portions  of  recent  psychological  work  which  have  had 
and  are  likely  to  have  a  special  influence  on  education. 
Part  I  is  concerned  mainly  with  genetic  psychology  : 
instincts,  the  growth  of  habit,  and  the  effect  of  environ- 
ment and  suggestion.  In  selecting  these  topics  for  dis- 
cussion it  is  not  of  course  claimed  that  the  views  involved 
are  wholly  modern,  some  of  them  have  formed  the  basis 
of  educational  theory  for  several  generations.  Much  of 
the  permanent  value,  for  example,  of  Froebel's  work  is 
due  to  his  recognition  of  certain  innate  impulses  in 
children  of  which  the  teacher  must  make  use,  and  some 
of  Rousseau's  statements  concerning  child  nature  and 
the  influence  of  environment  might  well  have  been 
written  to-day.  What  is  intended  is  rather  to  summarise 
the  theories  as  they  now  stand  and  to  show  their  bearing 
on  what  is  being  and  can  be  done  in  education.  The 
topics  selected  have  been  chosen  because  of  their  funda- 
mental importance  in  this  connection. 

5 


6  BEARINGS   OF   MODERN    PSYCHOLOGY 

Part  II  is  concerned  with  some  special  studies  in 
educational  psychology  and  in  particular  with  experi- 
mental work.  Here  it  has  been  thought  better  to  pick 
out  certain  points  for  discussion  as  illustrative  of  the 
work  that  is  being  done  rather  than  to  attempt  any 
general  summary  of  results. 

Some  portions  of  the  substance  of  Chapters  I,  II,  and 
III  have  already  appeared  in  seven  articles  published  in 
"Child  Life,"  March,  May,  and  June,  191 3,  January, 
February,  March,  and  May,  1914;  and  parts  of  Chapter  V 
were  embodied  in  a  paper  presented  to  the  Education 
Section  of  the  British  Association  Meeting  in  191 3. 


The  Bearings  of  Modern  Psychology 
on  Educational  Theory  and  Practice 

Part  I 

CHAPTER  I 

THE   NATURE   OF   INSTINCT 

The  study  of  instinct  in  animals,  including  man,  has  led 
to  important  changes  in  modern  educational  theory,  and 
though  the  corresponding  changes  in  educational  prac- 
tice are  necessarily  slower  they  are  now  becoming  more 
widely  evident.  The  importance  to  the  teacher  of  some 
knowledge  of  what  is  meant  by  instinct  can  hardly  be 
exaggerated.  All  the  child's  activities  depend  primarily  on 
instinct  and  its  developments,  and  all  teaching  must  con- 
tinually avail  itself  of  these  activities.  It  would  be  rash 
to  offer  any  definition  of  education  in  a  book  of  this  size, 
but  it  will  readily  be  agreed  that  one,  at  least,  of  the 
educator's  aims  is  that  his  pupils  shall  behave  in  a  certain 
way  when  faced  by  certain  stimuli.  He  wants  the  pupil, 
when  presented  with  a  multiplication  sum,  to  behave  in 
the  particular  way  known  as  multiplying,  and  when  con- 

9 


10        BEARINGS    OF    MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

fronted  with  a  comrade  in  distress  to  behave  in  the  par- 
ticular way  known  as  sympathetic  and  helpful.  The 
child's  instinctive  tendencies  are  the  teacher's  starting 
point  in  influencing  behaviour  for  the  simple  reason 
that  no  other  starting  point  is  available.  Good  teachers 
have  always  appealed  to  them  although  they  have-not 
always  recognised  that  they  were  doing  so.  The  lack  of 
knowledge  is  dangerous,  however,  in  that  certain  in- 
stincts are  more  productive  for  the  teacher's  purpose 
than  others,  and  also  because  various  non-natural  activi- 
ties can  be  stimulated  by  an  appeal  to  such  an  instinct 
as  fear,  the  semi-paralysing  effects  of  which  are  calcu- 
lated in  the  end  to  defeat  the  teacher's  real  aim. 

The  older  view  was,  to  put  it  briefly,  that  instinct 
belonged  to  the  lower  animals  and  reason  to  man.  Human 
instincts,  so  far  as  they  existed,  were  at  the  best  undigni- 
fied and  at  the  worst  improper,  and  the  object  of  educa- 
tion was  to  teach  the  child  to  overcome  them  or  at  least 
to  keep  them  in  subjection.  Some  remnants  of  this  view 
still  survive  in  the  prejudice  which  appears  even  in  recent 
books  on  education  against  the  term  instinct.  Some 
writers  prefer  to  term  man's  '  higher  '  impulses  spiritual, 
his  '  lower  '  instinctive — a  distinction  that  can  hardly  be 
maintained  without  confusion  of  thought.  In  fact  we 
are  now  bound  to  recognise  that  reasoning  powers, 
morality  and  all  that  we  most  respect  in  man  develop 
out  of  the  child's  instinctive  tendencies,  and  that  the 
germs  of  some  at  least  of  these  '  higher  '  impulses  can 
be  found  in  animals.  The  business  of  the  teacher  is  first 
to  find  out  what  these  tendencies  are  and  then  by  pro- 


THE   NATURE    OF   INSTINCT  ii 

viding  suitable  material  for  their  exercise,  by  suggestion 
and  by  help  in  various  ways,  to  see  that  the  resulting 
activities  are  educational.  The  giving  of  information, 
the  encouragement  of  thought,  and  the  stimulus  to  un- 
selfish activities  must  all  be  based  on  this  study  of  in- 
stinct. 

Various  definitions  have  been  given  of  instinct,  but 
we  may  here  be  content  to  enumerate  the  distinctive 
features  which  characterise  instinctive  action,  following 
in  the  main  McDougall's  treatment  of  the  subject. 

In  the  first  place,  then,  instincts  are  inherited  or  innate 
dispositions,  i.e.  they  are  part  of  the  child's  natural 
endowment  and  not  the  result  of  his  nurture  or  educa- 
tion. This  does  not,  of  course,  mean  that  all  instinctive 
tendencies  appear  at  or  very  shortly  after  birth,  though 
the  majority  of  them  can  be  traced  back  to  the  first  year 
of  the  child's  life.  It  does  however  mean  that  instinctive 
action  is  unlearnt  and  arises  naturally  in  response  to  the 
proper  stimulus.  A  chicken  just  hatched  apparently 
pecks  at  its  food  by  instinct,  and  young  spiders  make  webs 
from  the  same  cause. 

Secondly,  these  inherited  dispositions  enable,  or  more 
strictly  speaking,  oblige  their  possessor  to  be  aware  of 
and  to  pay  attention  to  those  objects  which,  as  we  say, 
stimulate  the  instinct.  A  dog  can  and  must  pay  atten- 
tion to  the  presence  of  a  rat  of  which  his  master  is  quite 
unaware.  In  somewhat  the  same  way  children  are  keenly 
aware  of  the  presence  of  unopened  boxes  or  parcels  which 
stimulate  their  curiosity,  but  which  their  father,  with 
curiosity  damped  by  larger  experience,  hardly  notices. 


12        BEARINGS    OF    MODERN    PSYCHOLOGY 

Thirdly,  the  perception  of  the  object  tends  to  have 
two  results.  It  arouses  in  the  perceiver  the  specific 
emotion  which  is  a  component  part  of  the  instinct 
stimulated,  and  it  causes  him  to  act,  or  to  desire  very 
strongly  to  act,  in  a  certain  more  or  less  definite  way. 
Thus  we  can  distinguish  three  factors  in  the  whole  in- 
stinctive process.  The  stimulus,  the  emotion  which 
accompanies  the  perception  of  the  stimulus,  and  the 
reaction  which  follows.  To  refer  again  to  the  example 
given  above  :  the  dog  sees  or  smells  the  rat,  at  once 
becomes  violently  excited,  and  tries  eagerly  to  catch  and 
kill  it :  all  which  we  may  explain  by  saying  that  the 
sight  or  smell  of  the  rat  arouses  his  hunting  instinct. 
For  the  observer  the  connection  between  stimulus  and 
reaction  is  usually  the  most  noticeable  feature,  but  to 
the  individual  whose  instincts  are  stimulated  the  emotion 
is  apt  to  be  so  strong  as  to  overshadow  everything  else, 
and  the  reaction  is  sometimes  carried  out  almost  un- 
consciously This  fact  is  evident  enough  to  introspec- 
tion, and  in  connection  with  it  should  be  noted  the  sense 
of  fitness  and  inevitableness  which  is  often  one  of  the 
most  marked  characteristics  of  instinctive  actions  from 
the  point  of  view  of  the  individual  performing  them. 
Children,  if  they  were  able  readily  to  analyse  and  express 
their  feelings,  might  not  unreasonably  ask  "  How  could 
I  have  done  anything  else  ?  "  when  their  elders  inquire 
"  why  "  they  behaved  so  violently  or  so  absurdly  in  a  fit 
of  anger  or  shyness.  And  indeed  to  reason  with  a 
child  or  adult  who  is  excited  by  a  strong  instinctive 
emotion  is  generally  waste  of  time.     Reason  must  do 


THE   NATURE    OF    INSTINCT  13 

its  work  either  before  or  after  the  event.  In  later  life, 
it  is  true  that  since  we  all  render  some  degree  of  lip- 
service  to  reason  we  often  supply  grounds  for  our  in- 
stinctive actions  afterwards,  when  we  reflect  upon  them, 
and  most  people  can  convince  themselves,  if  not  their 
friends,  that  such  actions  were  in  reality  reasoned  out. 
In  fact,  however,  reasoned  actions  proper  are  marked  by  a 
degree  of  deliberation  and  often  of  hesitancy  quite  foreign 
to  instinctive  actions.  Of  course  many  instinctive  actions 
are  quite  reasonable  in  the  sense  that  excellent  reasons 
can  be  found  for  them  and  that  they  may  be  what  we 
should  have  done  had  we  stopped  to  think  ;  but  that  is  a 
different  matter  and  does  not  justify  us  in  asserting  that 
we  did  think. 

Certain  features  of  the  instinctive  process  are  of  special 
importance  to  the  teacher.  The  first  of  these  is  con- 
nected with  the  appeal  made  by  the  stimuH  which  arouse 
the  corresponding  instinct.  Such  stimuH  are,  as  it  were, 
appropriate  to  the  organism  and  are  readily  perceived, 
although  they  may  not  seem  specially  noticeable  to  others. 
Or  rather  not  only  are  they  readily  perceived  but  they 
cannot  be  ignored.  The  dog's  perception  of  a  cat  or  a 
rabbit,  the  sea-gull's  perception  of  food  thrown  on  the 
water,  the  butterfly's  choice  of  a  suitable  leaf  for  its  eggs 
are  all  instances  of  the  same*  thing.  Hence  it  follows  that 
the  teacher  who  uses  material  which  appeals  to  a  child's 
instincts  need  make  little  effort  to  secure  attention  ; 
that  comes  of  itself.  In  fact  the  more  directly  the  in- 
stinct is  appealed  to  the  less  the  child  can  help  attending. 
We  are  aU  familiar  with  this  in  connection  with  nursery 


14        BEARINGS   OF   MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

management,  where  the  intelligent  nurse  keeps  the  new 
toys  to  give  the  baby  when  she  is  busy  or  on  a  wet  after- 
noon, and  the  same  thing  is  true  in  the  schoolroom  if  we 
allow  for  the  modifications  of  instinct  by  experience, 
with  which  we  shall  have  to  deal  later.  On  the  other 
hand,  distractions  from  the  subject  in  hand  may  also 
appeal  to  instinct.  Few  children,  for  instance,  can  attend 
to  other  things  while  their  curiosity  is  stimulated  by  the 
sounds  of  a  band  in  the  street  outside,  and  most  teachers 
know  that  it  is  better  to  give  up  a  few  minutes  to  satisfy- 
ing this  curiosity  than  to  waste  the  lesson  in  fruitless 
protests. 

In  the  next  place,  the  teacher  must  realise  that  the 
child's  behaviour  under  the  influence  of  instinctive 
emotion  is,  in  early  years  especially  and  to  some  extent 
all  through  life,  unreasoning,  '  blind,'  '  irresponsible,'  or 
whatever  similar  word  we  Hke  to  apply  to  it.  The  child's 
physical  organism  supplies  the  suitable  reaction  and,  as 
we  have  seen,  his  emotional  feeling  is  too  strong  and 
engrossing  to  allow  him  to  reflect.  To  blame  a  child 
for  being  angry  may  be  justified  as  one  way  of  showing 
him  that  anger  is  '  unsocial '  and  is  disapproved  of,  and 
thus  giving  him  a  motive  to  self-control.  But  the  blame 
should  be  connected  with  the  anger  and  not  measured 
by'the  amount  of  damage  done,  which  is  after  all  chiefly 
the  result  of  chance. 

Finally  the  teacher  has  to  recognise  the  strength  of 
the  instinctive  impulse  and  to  understand  the  difficulty 
of  thwarting  or  suppressing  it.  To  guide  it  by  stimula- 
tion in  another  and  more  desired  direction  is  a  much 


THE   NATURE    OF    INSTINCT  15 

easier  matter.  Many  children,  for  instance,  are  destruc- 
tive of  toys  and  other  things  either  from  curiosity  or 
from  clumsy  attempts  at  construction  :  to  stop  this 
directly  is  almost  impossible,  but  it  may  be  turned  into 
harmless  and  even  useful  directions  by  giving  them  waste 
paper  and  other  materials  which  can  be  torn  up,  by 
helping  them  when  possible  to  take  their  toys  to  pieces 
and*  reconstruct  them,  and  by  the  provision  of  suitable 
toys  that  will  stand  experimental  treatment.  If,  however, 
a  case  arises  where  the  instinctive  tendency  needs  to  be 
checked  rather  than  directed  this  can  only  be  done 
effectively  by  arousing  another  force  as  strong  as  itself, 
i.e.  by  appeal  to  another  instinct.  Fortunately  for  the 
teacher  some  instincts  naturally  tend  to  check  and 
counteract  one  another  and  can  be  legitimately  made 
use  of  in  this  way  by  the  educator.  The  nurse  who  tries 
to  persuade  an  angry  baby  to  stop  crying  by  knocking 
on  its  cot  or  offering  it  a  new  toy  is  justified  in  that  she 
is  appealing  to  one  instinct,  curiosity,  to  overcome  another, 
anger.  A  child's  fear  of  a  strange  object  may  be  over- 
come by  its  curiosity  to  find  out  what  it  is  hke.  Or  again, 
fear  of  animals  may  be  overcome  by  the  help  of  the 
protective  instinct,  as  when  a  child  is  given  perhaps  a 
young  and  obviously  harmless  dog  to  look  after  and 
learns  to  understand  other  dogs  in  the  process.  But  if 
no  way  of  directing  usefully  or  counteracting  an  instinc- 
tive tendency  can  be  found,  and  its  effects  as  manifested 
are  definitely  harmful,  the  best  method  of  procedure 
is  often  to  avoid  stimulating  it  as  much  as  pos- 
sible.   Irritable  children  should  be  considerately  treated 


1 6        BEARINGS   OF   MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

until  improved  health  or  more  developed  interests  make 
them  less  liable  to  fits  of  anger.  This  is  the  real  force 
of  that  much-neglected  maxim  :  "  Fathers,  provoke  not 
your  children  to  wrath."  This  point  is  closely  connected 
with  the  growth  of  habit  and  we  shall  have  to  return  to 
it  later. 

We  may  now  sum  up  briefly  the  standpoint  of  the 
teacher  in  respect  to  instinct.  He  must  recognise  that 
each  child  is  prompted  to  action  chiefly  by  its  possession 
of  instinctive  tendencies.  The  young  child  will  act  in 
response  to  any  stimulation  of  its  instincts  by  appro- 
priate objects,  and  will  act  in  the  way  determined  by 
the  instinct.  Throughout  the  process  he  will  be  intent, 
interested  whether  pleasurably  or  painfully,  hardly  if  at 
all  open  to  reason  and  with  difficulty  distracted  from  his 
purpose.  This  purpose  however  need  not  be  the  end  of 
the  action  as  we  see  it  and  indeed  is  generally  something 
much  more  immediate.  This  seems  obvious  and  yet  we 
are  still  apt  to  tell  a  young  child  to  run  about  "  to  keep 
himself  warm  "  and  to  be  surprised  when  we  come  out 
later  and  find  him  dabbling  in  a  cold  puddle. 

Further,  our  knowledge  of  animal  life  and  of  the 
workings  of  instinct  under  more  primitive  conditions 
suggests  that  the  best  and  most  effective  development 
can  only  come  from  the  exercise  and  satisfaction  of  all 
the  instincts  to  the  fullest  extent  practicable  under 
modern  conditions.  The  domestic  dog  going  for  his 
walk,  delightful  creature  though  he  is,  is  only  half  alive 
compared  with  the  same  dog  when  hunting  rabbits. 
And  for  children  too,  the  best  and  most  complete  develop- 


THE   NATURE    OF   INSTINCT  17 

ment  comes  from  freely  exercising  their  instincts  and 
developing  by  this  means  powers  of  thought  and  wider 
interests.  Here,  however,  a  difficulty  arises,  not  yet 
wholly  understood.  The  child's  instincts  are  his  in- 
heritance from  primitive  times  when  life  was  led  under 
very  different  conditions  and  they  are  not  all  equally 
suited  to  life  as  it  is  to-day.  Some  of  them  seem  almost 
wholly  unsuited.  Yet  it  is  suggested  that  children  and 
adults  may  suffer  seriously  from  unsatisfied  or  '  balked  ' 
instincts,  as  Graham  Wallas  calls  them,  and  that  a  strained 
and  unstable  nervous  condition  may  result  from  lack  of 
stimulus  for  such  important  primitive  instincts  as 
pugnacity  and  fear.  Some  educationalists  indeed  believe 
that  the  best  environment  for  children  up  to  about  twelve 
years  of  age,  would  be  one  which  reproduced  primitive 
conditions  to  some  extent  and  allowed  a  free  life  of 
hunting,  fishing  and  outdoor  games  in  a  more  or  less 
rough  country  or  sea-side  district,  with  little  direct 
teaching  and  little  appeal  at  this  stage  to  the  more 
social  and  humane  instincts.  Children  might  thus 
satisfy  some  of  their  less  '  civilised  '  instinctive  tendencies 
at  a  time  when  they  could  do  so  without  harm  to  them- 
selves or  their  neighbours  and  with  considerable  benefit 
to  their  physical  development.  It  is  the  less  necessary 
to  discuss  this  suggestion  at  length  since  it  is  obviously 
impracticable  for  the  great  majority  of  children,  but  the 
point  of  view  which  prompts  it  is  sufficiently  correct 
to  deserve  the  teacher's  sympathetic  consideration  and 
to  determine  him  to  provide  at  any  rate  some  legitimate 
outlet  for  the  wilder  and  more  primitive  instincts  which 


1 8        BEARINGS   OF   MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

are  apt  to  be  neglected  or  disapproved  of.  It  may  how- 
ever be  noted  that  these  instincts  can  be  at  any  rate 
partially  satisfied  under  civilised  conditions,  and  that  the 
boy  whose  curiosity  and  love  of  adventure  finds  an  outlet 
in  the  study  of  birds  and  animal  life  is  as  '  naturally,' 
and  more  intelligently,  developed  than  the  boy  who  has 
always  a  stone  in  his  hand  to  throw  at  any  living  creature 
that  may  turn  up,  and  there  is  no  reason  why  the  former 
boy  should  not  grow  up  as  manly  and  as  good  a  '  sports- 
man '  as  the  latter,  though  he  may  find  less  pleasure  in 
mere  killing  for  its  own  sake. 

The  practical  outcome  of  all  this  study  of  instinct  in 
children  is  the  need  for  greater  freedom  in  school  life. 
The  teacher  must  provide  material  and  a  suitable  en- 
vironment— this  latter  no  easy  task — must  give  help 
when  needed  and  must  be  content  to  let  the  child  work 
out  its  own  salvation  to  a  much  greater  extent  than  was 
formerly  thought  possible.  This  need  for  freedom  is 
now  widely  recognised,  but  a  further  point  still  needs 
emphasis,  and  that  is  that  freedom,  to  be  really  valuable, 
does  not  mean  merely  that  all  the  children  in  the  class 
are  enjoying  their  work  and  do  it  willingly.  A  skilful 
teacher  can  produce  this  effect  and  yet  teach  what  is 
not  really  suited  to  the  child's  stage  of  development. 
Instances  of  this  are  still  to  be  found  in  infant  schools 
where  the  teacher  has  to  give  lessons  in  such  subjects 
as  reading,  writing  or  number  whilst  her  pupils  are  still 
too  young  for  them.  The  clever  teacher  falls  back  upon 
the  child's  love  of  play  or  story  and  persuades  it  into  learn- 
ing by  indirect  means.     But  the  interest  thus  aroused  is 


THE   NATURE   OF   INSTINCT  19 

artificial  in  that  it  has  no  direct  connection  with  the 
subject  matter  of  the  lesson,  and  much  time  is  wasted 
because  the  child's  attention  is  but  half  secured  and  he 
learns  slowly  and  with  great  expenditure  of  energy  on 
the  teacher's  part.  Later  on  when  the  child's  command 
of  words  is  greater  and  his  control  over  his  muscles  has 
increased  he  will  learn  to  read  and  write  with  genuine 
interest  in  half  the  time,  and  without  the  strained  ad- 
mixture of  irrelevant  story. 

Effective  freedom  means  that  the  child's  procedure 
is  self-directed  within  the  limits  of  the  material  avail- 
able, and  much  of  the  teacher's  skill  is  directed  to  pro- 
viding material  that  may  be  suitable  to  her  ultimate 
purpose  as  well  as  to  the  child's  immediate  ends.  The 
Montessori  system  of  education  provides  a  clear  example 
of  what  is  meant  by  this,  whether  or  no  we  entirely  agree 
with  the  choice  of  material  advocated.  In  a  Montessori 
school  the  child  chooses  its  own  material  from  the 
toys  and  occupations  provided  and  works  and  plays  at 
its  own  pace,  alone  or  with  a  group  of  other  children, 
according  to  its  inclination  ;  it  also  changes  its  occupa- 
tion at  will.  There  is  thus  little  or  no  class  teaching, 
though  for  certain  games  and  in  most  English  schools 
of  this  type,  for  stories,  the  children  may  all  come 
together.  Clearly  a  school  of  this  sort  is  only  possible 
if  the  occupations  provided  appeal  to  the  children's 
instinctive  tendencies,  that  is,  if  they  find  them  attrac- 
tive and  absorbing.  The  teacher,  on  the  other  hand, 
may  see  in  them  the  means  to  an  end  and  may  note  the 
child's  progress  towards  the  skills  of  reading  and  writing, 


20        BEARINGS   OF   MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

or  towards  an  understanding  of  number.  It  is  indeed 
only  by  remembering  the  nature  of  instincts  that  we  can 
explain  what  is  at  first  sight  an  amazing  result — that  of 
a  large  number  of  children  working  more  or  less  inde- 
pendently without  interfering  with  one  another,  and  with 
no  compulsion  except  that  exerted  by  the  general 
atmosphere  of  the  school,  the  sight  of  the  material  and 
the  pleasure  of  occasional  help  and  encouragement  from 
the  teacher  or  their  companions.  The  contrast  between 
this  and  a  school  managed  on  the  old  lines,  with  its  half- 
attentive  children  doing  careless  work  and  on  the  look 
out  for  every  form  of  surreptitious  amusement,  needs  no 
comment. 

It  is  not  necessary  here  to  give  any  list  of  the  chief 
human  instincts,  and  indeed  different  writers  have 
adopted  different  methods  of  classification.  Thorndike, 
for  example,  enumerates  about  fifty  instincts,  some  of 
which,  such  as  sucking,  other  writers  have  called  reflexes. 
Others  in  the  list,  such  as  specific  fears,  of  noises,  of  open 
places,  of  the  dark,  and  so  on,  can  conveniently  be  grouped 
together  under  the  one  heading  '  fear.'  In  McDougall's 
classification,  where  special  importance  is  attached  to  the 
emotional  side  of  instinct,  the  list  is  much  shorter,  because 
in  several  cases  impulses  apparently  innate  have  no  specific 
emotion  which  can  be  distinguished  as  characteristic  of 
them.  Thus  McDougall  classes  sympathy,  imitation, 
and  suggestion  as  general  innate  tendencies  because  the 
accompanying  emotion  in  each  case  is  vague  and  indeter- 
minate. Again,  some  of  the  instincts  in  Thorndike's  list, 
such  as  those  of  creeping,  standing,  walking,  ripen  and 


THE  NATURE   OF   INSTINCT  21 

either  disappear  or  develop  into  habits  long  before  the 
child  can  describe  the  accompanying  emotion,  although 
this  may  very  likely  be  of  a  specific  and  distinguishing 
nature.  Both  wider  and  narrower  classifications  may  be 
of  use  to  the  teacher  :  the  former  when  he  wants  to 
study  the  various  forms  of  activity  he  may  expect  to 
find  in  young  children  and  to  distinguish  those  generally 
believed  to  be  innate  from  those  due  to  environment : 
the  narrower,  as  giving  a  list  of  the  known  strong  emo- 
tional impulses  connected  with  certain  stimuli  and  likely 
to  call  out  certain  reactions.  The  narrower  list,  if  we 
include  the  so-called  innate  tendencies,  contains  most 
of  the  impulses  upon  which  the  teacher  must  rely  in 
school  life  and  for  which  he  can  provide  appropriate 
stimuli :  many  of  the  others  are  apparently  dependent 
upon  physiological  conditions  and  stimuli  which  are  not 
directly  within  the  teacher's  control.  Thus  it  is  easy  to 
stimulate  a  child's  curiosity,  anger  or  fear,  but  difficult 
to  stimulate  him  to  creep.  He  will  try  to  creep  of  his 
own  accord  as  soon  as  he  feels  able  to  do  so.  Hence  the 
narrower  and  more  definite  treatment  of  instinct  is  of 
the  greater  direct  importance  to  the  teacher,  and  it  is 
on  this  account  that  we  have  adopted  it  for  the  purposes 
of  this  book. 

The  tendency  to  play  demands  special  consideration 
because  of  its  primary  importance  in  child  life  and  its 
widespread  uses  in  education.  It  is  sometimes  called 
an  instinct,  but  if  we  adopt  the  criteria  suggested  above 
vve  cannot  give  it  this  title  because  there  is  no  specific 
stimulus  which  arouses  it,  nor,  apparently,  any  one  specific 


22        BEARINGS   OF   MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

emotion  felt  while  the  individual  is  playing.  In  fact  the 
simplest  view  of  play  is  that  it  describes  the  attitude  of 
the  young  child  towards  life.  It  is  hardly  too  much  to 
say  that  the  distinction  between  work  and  play  is  an 
adult  distinction  and  has  little  meaning  for  the  child,  or 
for  those  who  are  observing  him.  If  we  adopt  this 
standpoint,  however,  we  must  not  of  course  limit  '  play  ' 
to  what  is  easy.  As  far  as  effort  goes,  few  adults  work 
harder  than  a  healthy  child  of  eighteen  months  or  two 
years  old,  and  in  a  suitable  environment  this  whole- 
hearted energy  of  body  and  mind,  entering  vigorously 
into  whatever  is  on  hand,  should  be  kept  up  to  some  extent 
into  late  childhood  and  even  into  adult  life.  We  say  '  to 
some  extent '  because  with  developing  interests  distrac- 
tions arise  and  the  interests  themselves  imply  greater 
strain  as  the  child's  purpose  becomes  more  definite  and 
less  immediate.  But  granting  this  limitation,  the  play 
attitude  is  the  right  one  for  the  child  and  the  only  one 
natural  for  him.  If  however  by  '  play  '  we  mean  mere 
'  fooling  ' — good  in  its  way  but  without  a  definite  end 
in  view — then  the  child,  even  from  babyhood,  both 
works  and  plays.  He  works  at  talking  with  an  almost 
painful  effort  to  express  himself  and  be  understood  ;  he 
works,  for  example,  at  taking  books  out  of  a  shelf  and 
piling  them  up  on  a  chair,  or  at  filling  his  bucket  with 
pebbles.  He  also  '  fools,'  throwing  things  about  aimlessly 
with  delighted  laughter,  pulhng  someone's  hair,  rolHng 
on  the  floor,  and  so  on.  In  the  former  cases  interruption 
or  misunderstanding  is  serious  and  generally  results  in  a 
storm,  in  the  latter  one  form  of  '  foohng  '  passes  readily 


THE   NATURE   OF    INSTINCT  23 

into  another  or  into  one  of  the  forms  of  '  work.'  '  Fool- 
ing '  is  often  valuable  physically  and,  except  for  some 
specially  excitable  children,  appears  to  afford  more  mental 
rest  than  a  healthy  child  can  get  otherwise  than  in  sleep, 
but  it  is  not  of  much  direct  value  to  the  teacher  in  school, 
and  it  seems  a  misuse  of  language  to  restrict  the  term 
*  play  '  to  it  to  the  exclusion  of  the  other  more  pur- 
posive attitude. 

Finally,  it  may  be  pointed  out  that  when  instinct  is 
recognised  as  the  basis  of  school  training  it  is  well  to 
remember  that  individuals  differ  both  in  rapidity  of 
development  and  in  natural  endowment.  All  children 
do  not  appear  to  experience  instinctive  emotions  with 
equal  force,  and,  moreover,  instincts  appear  to  ripen  at 
slightly  different  times  in  different  cases.  Hence  classi- 
fication according  to  age  is  misleading,  as  indeed  is  well 
known.  It  is  more  important  to  note  that  greater  free- 
dom of  choice  of  occupation  and  less  rigid  insistence  on 
class  teaching  will  materially  simplify  the  problem  of 
classification.  The  child  can  satisfy  his  instincts  with 
the  material  best  suited  to  him  without  retarding  or 
accelerating  the  pace  of  his  fellows,  and  the  result  is  to 
remove  a  serious  cause  of  strain  and  friction. 

It  remains  to  consider  how  the  conception  of  discipline 
has  been  altered  by  the  stress  laid  on  freedom  and  in- 
stinctive development.  Teachers  have  long  been  familiar 
with  Herbart's  distinction  between  government  and 
guidance  ;  they  have  long  agreed  that  '  guidance  '  is  the 
final  goal.  The  change  in  modern  times  seems  to  be  that 
the  period  for  guidance  has  been  put  earlier,  in  fact, 


24        BEARINGS   OF   MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

apart  from  considerations  of  physical  welfare  which  act 
as  an  important  check,  some  theorists  would  say,  the 
earlier  the  better.  But  this  does  not  mean  disorder  and 
anarchy,  it  only  means  that  the  instinctively  occupied 
child  is  intent  on  his  own  business  and  is  neither  '  naughty' 
nor  inclined  to  interfere  with  his  neighbours  for  the 
mere  sake  of  interference. 

Still  the  teacher's  government  has  its  place.  On  the 
one  hand  the  child's  own  pursuits  may  in  themselves 
prove  disturbing  to  his  companions,  and  here  some 
readjustment  is  needed.  Moreover,  times  and  seasons 
need  to  be  observed  in  most  communities  and  certainly 
in  most  schools,  and  the  child,  like  the  genius,  resents, 
reasonably  enough,  interruptions.  A  baby  is  apt  to  be 
righteously  indignant  at  being  stopped  in  his  play  to 
have  his  dinner,  and  is  perhaps  still  more  angry  at  having 
his  hands  washed,  although  both  these  functions  are 
enjoyable  in  themselves.  And  the  same  thing  occurs 
with  older  children,  though  in  school  this  is  lessened  by 
the  tendency  to  imitate  and  accept  suggestions  from 
the  movements  of  the  rest  of  the  class.  Still  every 
teacher  will  find  occasional  need  to  enforce  a  certain 
sequence  of  events. 

In  practically  all  schools  too  teachers  will  have  a 
certain  proportion  of  children  who  have  been  ill-managed 
at  home  or  elsewhere  and  who  have  thus  already  acquired 
a  wrong  attribute  towards  their  fellows.  Such  children 
may  have  been  treated  too  severely,  until  they  suspect 
all  authority  of  being  harsh  and  unreasonable,  while  at 
the  same  time  they  have  grown  so  accustomed  to  punish- 


THE   NATURE   OF    INSTINCT  25 

ment  that  it  has  little  restraining  effect  upon  them. 
Others  may  have  been  spoiled,  in  that  their  selfish  im- 
pulses have  been  pampered  at  the  expense  of  their  un- 
selfish ones  and  they  have  grown  capricious  and  lazy 
from  overmuch  attention  and  well-meant  attempts  to 
satisfy  every  wish.  Others  may  have  experienced  a  mix- 
ture of  both  treatments.  In  cases  like  these  the  children 
will  need  time  to  adapt  themselves  to  their  new  environ- 
ment, and  in  the  interval  some  friction  is  hard  to  avoid. 

'  Government,'  then,  will  still  be  necessary  in  some 
degree,  and  probably  punishment  too  must  be  admitted, 
although  we  may  readily  acknowledge  that  recourse  to 
punishment  is  an  admission  of  failure  on  the  teacher's 
part  as  well  as  on  the  child's.  Moreover,  the  word 
punishment  is  to  be  understood  in  a  wide  sense  as  meaning 
any  method  of  making  the  consequences  of  his  actions 
unpleasant  to  the  child.  Some  schools  claim  to  have 
*  no  '  punishments,  but  if  the  claim  be  examined  it  will 
generally  be  found  that  what  has  really  been  done  is  to 
produce  such  an  atmosphere  that  a  word  or  two  of  blame, 
or  the  disapproval  of  the  other  children,  is  effective  to 
restrain  the  pupils  as  much  as  is  desired.  In  brief,  punish- 
ment has  been  made  more  civilised,  though,  be  it  noted, 
not  necessarily  less  severe,  but  has  not  been  altogether 
abolished.  Punishment  in  this  wider  sense  of  the  term 
is  indeed  an  effective  deterrent  throughout  life,  and 
most  of  us  can  remember  occasions  when  the  surprise  or 
disapproval  of  friends  proved  a  sufficiently  severe  penalty. 

Punishments,  then,  will  be  occasionally  necessary,  but 
we  may  rule  out  at  once  any  that  are  either  injurious  to 


26        BEARINGS   OF   MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

health  or  tend  to  make  a  burden  of  things  that  we  wish 
the  child  to  enjoy  or  are  merely  silly.  With  this  proviso 
the  only  sane  method  of  estimating  the  value  of  a  punish- 
ment seems  to  be  by  its  results  as  a  deterrent.  Both 
teacher  and  child  should  understand  that  the  punish- 
ment is  intended  to  remind  or  to  deter,  and  if  it  fails  to 
work  something  else  must  be  tried.  This  should  be 
obvious.  Yet  we  still  find  schools  where  children  are 
*  kept  in  '  week  after  week,  in  some  cases  almost  day  after 
day,  for  some  particular  fault.  Yet  clearly  if  being  kept  in 
does  not  have  the  desired  effect  at  first  the  child  becomes 
used  to  it.  Being  punished  may  grow  into  a  habit  as 
readily  as  anything  else.  As  a  rule  if  a  fault  recurs  again 
and  again  in  spite  of  punishment  it  is  a  sign  that  som^e 
readjustment  is  needed.  Something  is  being  demanded 
of  the  child  to  which  at  present  he  cannot  respond,  and 
the  teacher  who,  through  a  mistaken  sense  of  dignity  or 
an  excessive  respect  for  rules,  continues  to  insist,  is  at 
best  putting  himself  into  an  absurd  position,  and  at  worst 
doing  the  child  serious  harm.  Such  teachers  have  the 
naivete  of  certain  magistrates  who  never  tire  of  express- 
ing their  surprise  at  the  number  of  convictions  recorded 
against  some  of  the  prisoners  who  come  before  them, 
not  realising  that  if  the  first  term  in  gaol  does  not  act  as 
a  deterrent  the  succeeding  terms  are  proportionately 
less  and  less  likely  to  do  so. 

Finally  even  in  regard  to  punishment  self-government 
should  be  kept  in  mind.  Whatever  point  of  behaviour 
the  teacher  insists  on  should  be  clearly  understood  and 
if  possible  approved  by  the  child — not  a  very  difficult 


THE  NATURE   OF    INSTINCT  27 

matter  since  most  children  are  extraordinarily  open  to 
reason  and  eager  to  please.  Then  the  punishment  should 
be  regarded  not  as  retributive,  still  less  as  vindictive,  but 
as  a  reminder.  The  child's  attitude  towards  punishment 
might  well  be  that  of  the  small  boy  who  having  been 
sent  into  the  corner  two  or  three  times  for  putting  jam 
on  the  visitor's  dress,  came  back  finally  remarking  as  he 
climbed  into  his  chair,  "  I  think  that's  done  it,"  and 
behaved  properly  for  the  rest  of  the  meal.  It  has  even 
been  found  effective  to  let  children  choose  their  own 
punishment  out  of  perhaps  two  or  three  specified.  This 
removes  any  resentment  and  gives  them  a  personal 
interest  in  the  result  to  be  attained  which  is  likely  to 
make  that  particular  punishment  effective  as  a  reminder. 
It  will  be  easily  realised  that  punishment  is  hardly  if 
ever  applicable  or  likely  to  be  effective  in  the  case  of 
so-called  moral  faults — lying,  cruelty,  and  so  on,  though 
it  may  lead  the  child  to  conceal  them.  Faults  of  this 
sort  need  to  be  remedied  by  arousing  other  impulses  and 
giving  special  stimulus  to  instinctive  tendencies  opposed 
to  these  particular  failings.  Even  the  social  punishment 
of  blame  and  disapproval  needs  to  be  cautiously  used, 
and  here  as  elsewhere  in  life  praise  of  the  good  is  infinitely 
more  effective  than  condemnation  of  the  bad.  Indeed 
the  study  of  instinctive  development  leads  us  always  to 
positive  rather  than  negative  discipline  wherever  it  is 
possible.  Stimulate  the  child  to  do  differently  in  the 
future  rather  than  punish  him  for  what  he  has  done 
badly  in  the  past. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  MODIFICATION  OF  INSTINCT: 
PURPOSIVE  ACTION 

Instinctive  action  is  unlearnt.  It  takes  place  in  conse- 
quence of  the  inherited  nature  of  the  organism  and  will 
take  place  apart  from  any  training.  But  this  must  not 
be  taken  to  mean  that  the  process  is  absolutely  fixed  and 
unchangeable.  Fixity  and  definiteness  used  to  be  re- 
garded as  a  distinguishing  feature  of  instinctive  action, 
and  this  was  perhaps  one  reason  why  man's  dependence 
on  instinct  was  minimised.  Variability  was  thought  to 
imply  reason.  But  it  is  now  generally  recognised  that 
even  in  insects  and  animals  the  fixity  of  the  instinctive 
reaction  has  frequently  been  exaggerated.  On  the  one 
hand  individual  variations  are  frequent,  and  on  the  other 
the  animal  can  '  learn  by  experience.'  This  learning  by 
experience  may  result  either  in  some  modification  of 
the  reaction,  or  in  the  instinct  being  excited  by  stimuli 
which  vary  in  some  degree  from  those  primarily  appro- 
priate to  it.  Of  the  three  factors  in  the  instinctive  pro- 
cess, the  stimulus,  the  emotion  and  the  reaction,  the 
first  and  last  are  thus  found  to  be  subject  to  modification 
by  experience  and  by  deliberate  training — on  the  other 


INSTINCT  :     PURPOSIVE   ACTION  29 

hand,  the  emotional  factor  is  held  to  be  little  susceptible 
of  modification  in  the  history  of  the  individual,  and  has 
probably  been  the  most  constant  of  the  three  in  the 
history  of  the  race.  Thus  an  angry  modern  Englishman 
probably  feels  very  much  as  angry  primitive  man  felt, 
but  different  things  may  arouse  his  anger  and  his  reactions 
may  be  different. 

We  need  not  therefore  expect  to  find  definite  and 
invariable  instinctive  reactions  in  children,  though  we 
may  expect  resemblance  to  a  common  type.  Thus  of 
a  family  of  children  all  crawl  before  walking,  but  one 
crawls  on  hands  and  knees,  one  pushes  itself  along  in  a 
half-sitting  position  with  a  hand  free  to  clasp  a  toy,  and 
a  third  trots  on  all  fours.  Similar  differences  in  the  various 
instinctive  reactions  will  be  found  throughout,  and  ex- 
amples can  easily  be  multiplied  by  any  observer  of  chil- 
dren. More  important,  however,  to  the  teacher  is  the 
fact  that  instinctive  reactions  are  modifiable  by  experi- 
ence and  that  '  experience '  includes  the  various  forms  of 
direct  and  indirect  training.  In  practice,  of  course,  it  is 
often  diflflcult  to  tell  whether  varying  reactions  are  due 
to  some  innate  differences  in  the  children  observed  or 
are  the  effects  of  environment,  including  perhaps  some 
form  of  training.  Thus  in  the  example  given  above  the 
different  methods  of  crawling  may  have  been,  and  very 
probably  were,  due  to  some  physiological  distinction  ; 
but  at  least  in  the  case  of  the  child  who  crawled  so  as  to 
hold  a  toy  the  position  may  have  resulted  from  some 
special  attachment  to  a  particular  toy  at  the  time  when 
he   began   to  crawl.      In   the  activities  of  rather  older 


30        BEARINGS   OF   MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

children,  too,  it  is  often  impossible  to  say  whether  some 
particularly  characteristic  '  reaction  ' — special  interest  in 
some  particular  subject,  for  example — is  due  to  a 
special  appeal  made  by  his  environment  or  to  some 
innate  tendency  or  gift.  Hence  it  is  rash  to  expect 
that  an  environment  which  we  have  found  successful  in 
arousing  certain  interests  or  producing  certain  behaviour 
in  one  child  will  prove  equally  successful  in  another, 
though  we  may  hope  that  it  will  do  so.  With  this  warn- 
ing we  may  pass  on  to  discuss  the  importance  to  the 
teacher  of  the  question  of  the  modification  of  instinctive 
reactions  and  of  the  stimuli  which  produce  them. 

As  has  been  pointed  out,  it  is  often  difficult  to  decide 
what  determines  the  form  of  the  first  reaction  or  the 
first  few  reactions,  but  it  is  clear  that  after  these  first 
few  reactions  the  particular  way  of  carrying  out  the 
instinctive  act  becomes  habitual  and  is  likely  to  "persist 
on  subsequent  occasions  whenever,  or  as  long  as,  that 
particular  activity  is  practised.  A  child  does  not,  as  a 
rule,  unlearn  his  method  of  crawling  after  he  has  once 
acquired  it,  and,  though  he  may  vary  it  occasionally,  he 
generally  lapses  into  the  favourite  form  when  he  is  in  a 
hurry.  And  when  we  consider  the  more  complex  in- 
stinctive reactions  we  find  the  same  thing  occurring. 
Here  too  an  habitual  form  of  reaction  soon  appears  and 
becomes  relatively  persistent.  Every  child  has  certain 
definite  ways  of  showing  anger,  aifection,  curiosity,  and 
so  on,  and  these  ways  become  habitual  by  constant  use 
and  often  persist  into  adult  life.  An  interesting  example 
of  the  use  to  which  this  fact  may  be  put  in  education  is 


INSTINCT  :     PURPOSIVE   ACTION  31 

found  in  some  of  Dr.  Montessori's  apparatus,  devised 
to  give  children  opportunities  in  school  of  practising 
certain  enjoyable  movements  such  as  that  of  climbing 
along  a  gate,  which  are  calculated  to  give  them  better 
habits  of  balance  and  control  and  ultimately  better 
habits  of  walking,  running,  and  so  on. 

But  the  teacher  can  also  modify  reactions  by  a  more 
direct  method.  It  is  obvious  that  in  any  creature  capable 
of  profiting  by  experience  any  reaction  which  fails  to 
satisfy  the  instinct  in  question  will  tend  to  be  avoided 
in  the  future,  whereas  any  successful  reaction  will  tend 
to  be  repeated  next  time.  This  is  the  basis  on  which 
rests  the  most  effective  ways  of  '  training '  animals  to 
modify  their  behaviour  in  a  desired  direction,  and  it  has 
been  used  from  time  immemorial  in  training  children. 
In  this  way  the  curious  child  learns  not  to  snatch  at  the 
object  which  stimulates  his  curiosity  but  to  ask  for  it, 
and  later  to  ask  questions  about  it,  possibly  without  even 
attempting  to  handle  it.  Similarly,  children  learn  to 
inhibit  the  more  violent  expressions  of  anger,  such  as 
kicking  and  screaming,  and  though  they  still  feel  and  show 
anger,  they  choose  less  noticeable  forms  of  relieving  their 
feelings.  Again,  in  some  families  demonstrative  expres- 
sions of  affection  are  encouraged  and  these  become 
habitual  to  the  child,  in  others  the  forms  of  expression 
favoured  are  quieter  and  the  child  adapts  himself  accord- 
ingly. Much  of  the  child's  training  in  good  manners 
consists  in  thus  favouring  or  making  successful  certain 
methods  of  satisfying  instinctive  impulses  to  the  ex- 
clusion of  other  methods.    But  people  are  apt  to  expect 


32        BEARINGS   OF   MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

too  much  from  the  system  and  to  hope  that  by  making  all 
reactions  to  certain  instincts  sufficiently  unpleasant  they 
will  prevent  the  excitation  o£  the  emotion  altogether. 
They  hope  by  ridicule  or  other  deterrents  to  make  a 
timid  child  fearless,  or  by  snubbing  questions  to  cure 
another  of  inconvenient  curiosity.  Such  treatment,  in 
fact,  is  apt  to  make  the  timid  child  more  nervous  than 
before  and  to  incite  the  curious  child  to  the  discovery  of 
less  legitimate  ways  of  satisfying  its  curiosity.  Once 
stimulated,  the  instinctive  process  is  like  a  stream  which 
it  is  difficult  to  dam  up  or  choke  off,  whilst  to  turn  it 
aside  and  modify  its  course  may  be  comparatively  easy. 
Just  as  we  find  children  differing  in  their  reactions  to 
instinctive  emotions,  so  also  we  shall  find  different 
stimuli  arousing  their  instincts,  and  these  stimuli  will 
vary  according  to  the  child's  past  history.  Take,  for 
example,  the  instinct  of  fear.  Children  learn  by  experi- 
ence that  certain  objects  of  which  they  were  at  first 
frightened,  owing  to  the  noise  they  made,  their  sudden 
movements  and  what  not,  are  in  fact  harmless,  just  as 
cattle  grazing  in  a  field  near  a  railway  soon  grow  in- 
different to  passing  trains.  Children  also  learn  that 
other  objects  not  in  themselves  terrifying  are  in  fact 
dangerous.  Thus  they  learn  not  to  touch  fire,  not  to 
walk  on  a  railway  line,  or  to  be  afraid  of  snakes.  In  all 
these  cases  the  modified  effect  of  the  stimulus  may  be 
either  the  result  of  direct  experience,  when  the  child 
learns  as  an  animal  might  do,  or  the  result  of  increasing 
knowledge  often  gained  by  the  explanations  and  warn- 
ings   of    their   elders.      Moreover,    by   association    they 


INSTINCT  :    PURPOSIVE   ACTION  33 

acquire  fear  of  objects  which  resemble  something  that 
has  frightened  them  or  which  in  some  w^ay  remind  them 
of  it.  Thus  a  child  who  has  been  bitten  by  a  dog  is 
afraid  of  all  dogs  afterwards,  however  harmless  they  may 
be,  and  a  child  who  has  been  terrified  by  a  cow  on  a  cer- 
tain road  will  try  to  avoid  that  road  on  his  daily  walks, 
although  he  may  know  that  the  cow  is  no  longer  there. 
As  children  grow  older,  however,  knowledge  and  reason 
both  help  increasingly  to  modify  the  stimuli  which  tend 
to  excite  their  fears.  They  know  how  to  distinguish  the 
ill-tempered  dog  or  cow  from  others,  and  act  accordingly, 
and  they  reason  about  their  fears  of  fire  or  of  the  dark. 
Most  people,  indeed,  can  reduce  such  terrors  to  fairly 
sane  proportions  in  later  life  even  when  they  suffered 
from  them  excessively  in  childhood. 

Further  examples  of  the  modification  of  stimulus  and 
reaction  may  be  found  in  the  case  of  other  instincts. 
We  will  consider  briefly  two  :  curiosity  and  construc- 
tiveness. 

Curiosity  is  stimulated  by  what  is  novel  and  inexplic- 
able. At  first  the  child's  curiosity  is  aroused  by  every 
fresh  object,  or  rather  by  any  change  in  his  environment 
that  he  is  able  to  perceive.  A  baby  may  be  said  to  be 
curious  about  everything  that  he  attends  to.  Light, 
moving  objects,  brightly  coloured  objects  are  all  noticed 
early,  then  gradually,  as  he  becomes  more  familiar  with 
his  surroundings,  he  begins  to  take  many  of  them  for 
granted  and  only  shows  interest  and  curiosity  in  them 
when  they  are  altered  in  appearance  or  position.  But 
he  is  still  curious  about  new  objects  when  these  come 


34        BEARINGS   OF   MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

within  his  powers  of  perception.  He  shows  his  interest 
by  certain  well-known  reactions  which  consist  in  follow- 
ing the  object  with  his  eyes,  expressing  surprise  by  some 
exclamation  and,  when  he  is  able  to  speak,  by  words, 
grasping  or  attempting  to  grasp  it,  and  if  he  succeeds 
in  getting  hold  of  it  by  handling  it  in  all  sorts  of  ways, 
and,  unless  prevented,  by  biting  and  sucking  it.  Later 
on  he  will  also  ask  questions  about  it,  but  this  does  not 
as  a  rule  replace  his  desire  to  touch  and  handle.  This 
process  of  examination  will  be  continued  until  his  curi- 
osity is  temporarily  satisfied.  He  may  wish  to  re-examine 
the  same  object  next  day,  but  his  curiosity  will  be  less 
this  time,  and  unless  the  handling  process  is  pleasurable 
and  leads  to  some  form  of  play  he  will  soon  lose  interest 
in  that  particular  thing.  Naturally  as  his  powers  of 
perception  increase  a  wider  circle  of  things  will  arouse 
his  curiosity,  but  the  sequence  of  keen  interest,  examina- 
tion in  any  way  possible,  and  loss  of  interest  when  curi- 
osity is  temporarily  satisfied,  will  repeat  themselves. 
At  the  age  of  eighteen  months  or  two  years  an  intelligent 
child  shows  curiosity  about  a  great  variety  of  objects  : 
cows  feeding  in  a  field  or  walking  down  the  road,  pieces 
of  paper  dropped  by  the  roadside,  a  man  cleaning  win- 
dows, tiny  kittens,  boats  being  unloaded,  and  so  on. 
But  gradually,  alongside  of  this  general  curiosity,  the 
growth  of  a  more  specialised  curiosity  can  be  traced. 
This  develops  along  the  lines  of  activities  that  have 
proved  pleasurable  and  hence  tend  to  be  repeated. 
Increased  familiarity  with  the  objects  now  makes  him 
able  to  perceive  much  smaller  differences,  and  hence  his 


INSTINCT  :     PURPOSIVE   ACTION  35 

curiosity  is  readily  excited  by  a  comparatively  small 
novelty  in  these  special  directions.  One  familiar  form 
of  such  specialised  curiosity  is  that  aroused  in  many 
children  by  railways,  another  is  connected  with  animals, 
another  with  houses.  Even  children  of  four  or  five  will 
be  found  to  have  special  interests  and  a  marked  tendency 
to  curiosity  in  some  one  or  more  of  these  or  other  similar 
directions.  The  starting-point  of  such  an  interest  is 
often  difficult  to  trace,  but  once  given  the  direction, 
interest,  curiosity,  and  knowledge  will  rapidly  increase 
unless  the  environment  is  very  unfavourable.  As  a  rule, 
any  such  interest  is  apt  to  be  encouraged  by  presents  of 
suitable  toys,  by  what  the  child  is  taken  to  see,  by  the 
tales  told  him,  and  so  on. 

By  the  time  the  child  is  eight  or  nine  then,  we  find 
him  not  only  still  curious  about  things  in  general  that 
strike  him  as  novel,  but  more  particularly  curious  in 
certain  directions,  and  in  these  directions  we  often  find 
him  possessing  a  surprising  amount  of  knowledge  and  a 
surprising  power  of  noticing  fresh  developments  and  of 
showing  intelligent  curiosity  about  them.  In  other 
directions  perhaps  he  will  seem  equally  surprisingly  dull 
and  incurious.  At  the  same  time  we  find  that  the 
means  taken  to  satisfy  his  curiosity  will  have  developed 
and  altered.  He  will  no  longer  bite  or  suck,  but  he  may 
question  his  elders,  seek  information  from  books,  or 
perhaps  experiment  and  investigate  on  his  own  account. 

A  somewhat  similar  process  of  development  may  be 
traced  in  connection  with  the  child's  constructive  in- 
stinct.   This  instinct  shows  itself  at  first  in  a  tendency  to 


36       BEARINGS   OF   MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

dabble  in  water  and  mess  about  with  sand  or  mud  or 
any  convenient  material,  and  probably  also  in  that  arrange- 
ment and  rearrangement,  piling  up  and  packing  away  of 
toys,  bricks,  books,  shells,  or  anything  else  available  which 
is  such  a  favourite  occupation  with  many  young  children. 
Suggestion  from  others  generally  plays  a  large  part  in  start- 
ing the  child's  activities  in  more  definite  directions. 
Thus  by  tradition  the  baby  generally  begins  his  building 
efforts  by  making  '  towers '  to  knock  down,  just  as  when 
he  is  older  he  will  build  '  castles '  on  the  sands.  In  time 
he  builds  houses  and  railways,  led  by  imitation  and 
suggestion  in  the  first  instance,  but  adding  and  working 
out  novelties  for  himself.  When  once  he  has  enjoyed  a 
bit  of  constructive  play  he  tends  to  repeat  it  at  the  next 
opportunity,  and  thus  he  generally  forms  a  habit  of 
building  some  particular  object  when  left  to  himself. 
Naturally  such  a  habit  is  often  connected  with  those  special 
interests  whose  development  we  have  already  considered 
in  connection  with  the  instinct  of  curiosity.  The  same 
thing  is  seen  in  children's  '  free '  drawings.  They 
develop  habits  of  drawing  houses  or  people  or  trees,  and 
carry  on  this  particular  activity  for  long  periods,  some- 
times for  months.  This,  of  course,  only  applies  to 
drawings  done  spontaneously  and  not  to  those  done  for 
a  special  purpose,  though  even  in  illustrating  stories 
some  children  will  introduce  a  favourite  object  into 
practically  every  illustration  they  draw,  whatever  the 
story  may  be.  In  such  cases  the  instinctive  impulse  has 
found  satisfaction  in  the  use  of  certain  materials  in  a 
certain  way,  and  the  activity  in  this  form  has  become 


INSTINCT  :     PURPOSIVE   ACTION  37 

relatively  habitual.  We  say  '  relatively  '  since  obviously 
and  indeed  fortunately  such  habits  are  easily  disturbed 
by  fresh  stimulus  from  playmates  or  elders  or  by  the 
varying  demands  of  school  life.  But  in  the  main,  just  as 
the  child  tends  to  develop  specialised  interests  with  their 
accompanying  specialised  curiosity,  so  he  tends  to  acquire 
habits  of  occupying  himself  with  certain  forms  of  con- 
structive work.  So,  too,  if  these  forms  are  too  '  childish  ' 
and  incapable  of  development  his  constructive  instinct 
may  apparently  wear  itself  out  on  them  until  interest  in 
construction  lapses  altogether,  possibly  never  to  revive. 

We  can  now  consider  more  particularly  the  educative 
bearing  of  these  modifications  in  instinct.  It  will  be 
convenient  to  discuss  this  from  two  points  of  view,  first 
in  reference  to  the  growth  of  purposive  or  voluntary 
action,  second  in  reference  to  the  development  of  mental 
activities  and  thought.  The  latter  discussion  will  be 
deferred  to  the  following  chapter.  This  division  is 
adopted  because  we  are  accustomed  to  distinguish 
between  the  teacher's  function  of  aiding  the  child  to 
form  definite  aims  and  of  guiding  the  selection  of  these 
aims,  from  his  function  in  helping  the  child  to  attain 
these  aims  whether  by  offering  information  or  by  encourag- 
ing thought  or  by  inducing  perseverance.  It  must  be 
noted,  however,  that  purpose  and  thought  necessarily 
develop  together.  The  child  cannot  advance  far  in 
ability  to  seek  an  end  without  increased  mental  power  to 
realise  it  and  to  work  out  the  means  to  attain  it.  And  on 
the  other  hand,  his  mental  growth  is  closely  connected 
with  his  efforts  to  attain  his  purpose. 


38        BEARINGS   OF   MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

Now  all  instinctive  action  is  purposive  in  the  sense 
that  it  satisfies  the  child's  emotional  needs  and  is  what 
he  desires  to  do  at  the  moment.  But  as  we  have  seen, 
the  reaction  follows  so  quickly  and,  as  it  were,  inevitably, 
on  the  stimulus  that  the  child  is  sometimes  hardly  con- 
scious o£  having  acted  until  afterwards,  and  he  has  at 
first  usually  no  consciousness  of  an  aim.  It  is  better 
therefore  to  reserve  the  term  purposive  for'  actions  in 
which  there  is  a  definite  end  in  view.  This  end  may 
either  coincide  with  the  activity  itself  or  the  activity 
may  be  regarded  as  a  means  to  the  end.  We  may  begin 
by  giving  an  example  of  the  development  of  purpose 
observed  in  a  child  of  eighteen  months.  The  child  could 
walk  holding  on  to  something  but  not  alone  ;  while  play- 
ing about  he  happened  to  pull  himself  up  with  the  help 
of  a  light  chair  which  of  course  slid  away  as  he  touched  it. 
He  followed  it  holding  on  all  the  time,  and  in  this  way 
pushed  it  across  the  room.  So  far  the  reaction  was 
merely  a  response  to  instinctive  activity  and  play  ten- 
dencies, but  at  this  point  purpose  began  to  show  itself. 
At  the  end  of  the  room  the  chair  stuck  and  he  showed 
his  desire  to  push  it  back  again  by  crawling  across  the 
room  to  fetch  someone  to  help.  It  was  turned  round 
and  he  started  again.  This  process  was  repeated  for  ten 
or  fifteen  minutes.  The  following  evening  the  sight  of 
the  chair  at  once  aroused  the  desire  to  push  it,  and  he 
asked  to  have  it  brought  out.  This  went  on  for  several 
evenings  until  he  wearied  of  the  game.  This  activity, 
although  so  simple,  shows  the  characteristics  of  pur- 
posive action  :    (i)  the  idea  of  some  definite  end,  i.e.  to 


INSTINCT  :     PURPOSIVE   ACTION  39 

push  the  chair  across  the  room  ;  (2)  the  thought  about 
and  adoption  of  means  to  attain  the  end  in  the  face  of 
obstacles,  i.e.  by  fetching  help  to  move  the  chair  out  of 
the  corner.  All  cases  of  early  purposive  action  are  very 
similar.  The  instinctive  activities  lead  accidentally  to 
some  specially  pleasurable  activity.  The  pleasure  taken 
in  the  result  makes  that  particular  action  clearer  to  the 
child's  mind  and  he  repeats  it.  Some  difficulty  arises, 
and  in  order  to  overcome  this  he  has  to  seek  some  means 
to  attain  his  end.  Of  course  the  difficulties  are  at  times 
too  great,  and  then  according  to  his  temperament  and 
the  strength  of  his  purpose  the  child  either  cries  or  turns 
to  some  easier  game. 

As  the  child  gets  older  his  powers  of  forming  an  idea 
of  his  aim  increases  and  he  is  also  better  able  to  think 
out  suitable  means,  but  the  process  is  essentially  the  same 
in  that  his  instincts  and  his  developing  interests  lead  him 
to  some  activity  the  idea  of  which  is  made  clearer  to 
his  mind  by  its  pleasurable  nature,  and  often  still  clearer 
by  the  difficulties  which  have  to  be  overcome  in  its 
pursuit.  The  following  example  may  serve  to  illustrate 
this  later  stage.  A  boy  had  developed  a  great  interest  in 
building  houses  with  sand  and  bricks  and  in  examining 
the  arrangement  of  rooms  in  real  houses  for  purposes  of 
comparison  and  imitation.  He  was  fond  of  drawing 
and  used  to  plan  out  imaginary  houses  on  paper  as  well 
as  in  the  sand,  and  make  up  stories  about  them.  Later 
on  he,  as  children  often  do,  developed  this  game  into  a 
more  elaborate  one  involving  imaginary  countries  with 
towns,  villages,  and  so  on.     When  he  was  about  seven 


40        BEARINGS   OF    MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

years  old  this  imaginative  game  occupied  a  large  share  of 
his  thoughts,  and  as  he  had  several  times  seen  maps  and 
had  easy  access  to  them,  he  naturally  turned  from  making 
plans  of  houses  to  drawing  maps  of  his  imaginary  coun- 
tries. In  making  these  maps  he  wished  to  show  the 
position  of  physical  features  and  towns,  but  more  par- 
ticularly of  mines,  railways,  and  so  on.  Hence  by  means 
of  questions  and  by  a  further  study  of  atlases  he  learnt 
how  to  indicate  mountains,  rivers,  railways,  coal  mines, 
and  even  rainfall  in  his  maps,  and  also  to  understand 
something  of  the  meaning  of  scale  and  the  uses  of  lines 
of  latitude  and  longitude.  In  this  case  the  purpose  was 
strong  enough  and  definite  enough  to  lead  him  through 
a  number  of  varied  activities  and  investigations  and  to 
enable  him  to  master  a  number  of  details  some  of  which 
were  by  no  means  easy  for  a  child  of  his  age.  Incidentally 
he  developed  a  genuine  interest  in  geography  and  ac- 
quired some  general  geographical  knowledge  in  addition 
to  that  connected  with  his  special  purpose  of  map  making. 
It  should  be  noted  that  no  particular  encouragement 
was  given  him  by  his  elders  beyond  a  readiness  to  answer 
questions. 

Purposive  action  in  quite  young  children  is  necessarily 
connected  with  their  instinctive  impulses,  but  as  these 
impulses  develop  into  more  or  less  habitual  activities 
and  the  child  acquires  definite  interests  in  connection 
with  these,  his  aims  will  often  be  related  to  these  inter- 
ests. Consequently  older  children  must  be  expected  to 
show  purpose  in  widely  differing  directions  corresponding 
to  the  variety  of  their  experience  and  developing  tastes. 


INSTINCT  :    PURPOSIVE   ACTION  41 

We  may  now  briefly  summarise  the  characteristics 
that  the  teacher  may  expect  to  find  in  such  cases  of 
purposive  action.  Some  of  these  characteristics  are, 
however,  cfosely  connected  with  mental  grow^th  and  will 
have  to  be  referred  to  again  later  on. 

(i)  The  purpose  is  the  child's  own,  and  the  idea  of  it 
has  come  to  him  in  direct  connection  with  his  instinctive 
activities  or  with  his  dominant  interests.  Hence  his  desire 
to  attain  it  will  be  proportionately  strong  and  may  have 
something  of  the  strength  of  the  original  instinctive  im- 
pulse. He  will  need  no  urging  to  carry  it  out,  and  indeed 
anger  and  resentment  may  be  roused  by  any  discourage- 
ment, and  disappointment  will  be  considerable  if  material 
obstacles  should  prove  insurmountable. 

(2)  Since  the  idea  of  the  end  generally  comes  to  the 
child  in  connection  with  his  habitual  activities,  he  is 
likely  to  have  a  stock  of  ideas  on  the  subject  which  will 
enable  him  to  understand  new  points  and  to  overcome 
difficulties  with  apparent  ease.  This  quickness  will 
often  surprise  us  if  we  do  not  know  the  child's  past 
history  and  merely  compare  him  with  other  children  of 
like  age  and  ability  but  different  experience.  Moreover, 
quick  progress  in  achieving  a  purpose  that  is  the  child's 
own  in  this  way  has  often  to  be  contrasted  with  the  slow- 
ness and  apparent  stupidity  with  which  the  same  child 
works  towards  an  end  suggested  to  him  by  others.  He 
may  be  eager  to  attain  the  suggested  end,  but  the  stock 
of  ideas  connected  with  his  previous  activities  is  here 
absent  and  this  explains  the  difference  in  result. 

(3)  The  knowledge  gained  in  pursuit  of  the  end  is 


42        BEARINGS    OF   MODERN    PSYCHOLOGY 

likely  to  be  retained  owing  to  the  zest  with  which  it  iS 
acquired  and  its  connection  with  existing  interesting 
ideas.  Such  past  knowledge  often  forms  a  starting-point 
for  fresh  interests  and  new  lines  of  thought  when  the 
immediate  purpose  is  satisfied.  Thus  the  geographical 
interest  in  the  case  of  the  boy  mentioned  above  may 
probably  persist  long  after  his  pleasure  in  imaginary 
countries  has  died  away  . 

(4)  The  ends  that  children  set  before  themselves, 
though  they  are  sometimes  attained  with  surprising 
ease  for  the  reasons  given  above,  yet  on  other  occasions 
give  ample  opportunity  for  hard  work  and  the  conquest 
of  difficulties.  The  struggles  which  children  sometimes 
make  to  succeed  in  their  self-imposed  tasks  in  the  face  of 
numerous  obstacles  are  a  partial  answer  to  those  who 
complain  that  modern  education  makes  everything  *  easy  ' 
for  the  child. 

We  may  conclude  this  chapter  by  noting  the  teacher's 
special  responsibilities  in  regard  to  this  development  of 
purpose  in  children.  Here  one  of  his  most  important 
duties  is  to  see  that  the  child's  aims  are  not  all  selfish. 
The  self-regarding  and  individualistic  instincts  are 
naturally  very  strong  since  they  are  closely  connected 
with  the  preservation  and  growth  of  every  young  crea- 
ture. But  the  child  has  also  other  instincts  belonging  to 
him  as  a  '  social '  animal.  Of  these  love  and  affection, 
the  susceptibility  to  praise  and  blame  which  arise  out  of 
the  instincts  of  self-assertion  and  self-abasement,  and 
the  protective  instinct  are  the  most  important.  All 
these  instincts  can  be  most  effectively  aroused  in  con- 


INSTINCT  :     PURPOSIVE   ACTION  43 

nection  with  habitual  activities  and  interests.  The  child's 
purpose  may  thus  be  unselfish  while  yet  he  is  working 
at  pursuits  of  which  he  is  already  fond.  Gradually  he 
may  pass  from  this  to  unselfish  activities  which  are  less 
attractive  in  themselves.  Love  and  affection,  for  example, 
should  be  given  plenty  of  scope  in  the  performance  of 
acts  of  kindness  and  consideration  which  are  in  them- 
selves pleasurable  to  normal,  healthy  children.  In  this 
way  the  aim  of  being  useful  and  kind  becomes  a  more 
permanent  one,  and  as  the  child  grows  older  he  is  better 
able  to  respond  to  more  serious  demands  on  his  un- 
selfishness. The  protective,  or  as  it  is  sometimes  called 
the  parental,  instinct  is  perhaps  even  more  valuable  as 
an  incentive  and  is  sometimes  particularly  strong  in 
healthy,  vigorous  children  whose  other  impulses  seem 
predominantly  individualistic.  The  term  '  parental ' 
is  somewhat  misleading  because  it  is  apparently  apt  to 
suggest  '  maternal '  and  to  convey  the  idea  that  this 
particular  instinct  is  generally  peculiar  to  girls,  whereas 
the  protective  instinct  to  take  care  of  and  look  after  some- 
thing weaker  than  oneself  appears  to  be  equally  strong 
in  both  sexes. 

In  a  normal  home  all  these  instincts  are  naturally  and 
continually  appealed  to,  indeed  home  life  is  sometimes 
criticised  as  tending  to  undue  limitation  of  the  child's 
individualistic  impulses  after  he  has  passed  the  stage  of 
babyhood.  In  school  the  position  is  apt  to  be  reversed. 
Most  schools  are  organised  on  individualistic  lines,  and 
even  where  modern  notions  of  greater  freedom  and  more 
scope  for  the  child's  instinctive  activities  are  accepted 


44       BEARINGS   OF   MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

they  have  often  been  grafted  on  to  the  older  organisa- 
tion. Hence  appeal  is  only  made  to  those  instincts  which 
can  be  satisfied  without  too  great  a  revolution  in  the 
previous  state  of  affairs.  But  co-operative  work,  kindly 
help  and  interest  for  others,  possibilities  of  doing  acts  of 
service  for  the  general  good  and  so  on  are  too  novel  to 
be  readily  provided  for,  so  that  it  is  only  in  a  few  schools, 
and  these  generally  for  quite  young  children,  that  we 
find  anything  like  the  appeal  of  a  good  home  made  to 
the  child's  social  as  distinct  from  his  individualistic 
instincts.  It  is  little  wonder  that  critics  complain  that 
freedom  in  school  makes  children  selfish,  since  the  appeal 
is  so  often  only  to  one  half  of  their  nature.  And  in  the 
primary  schools  at  least  the  still  prevalent  lack  of  co- 
operation between  parent  and  teacher  cuts  the  child  off 
from  many  important  outlets  for  and  stimuli  to  his 
social  impulses.  To  give  only  one  instance  out  of  many. 
The  child  taught  at  home  finds  great  pleasure  in  draw- 
ing '  pictures '  and  later  in  making  presents  for  his 
parents  and  brothers  and  sisters,  and  the  construction  of 
such  presents  adds  considerably  to  his  interest  and 
pleasure  in  handwork.  In  schools  his  drawing  and  con- 
structive impulses  are  still  sometimes  only  directed  to 
producing  a  bit  of  work  good  enough  to  be  shown  to 
the  rest  of  the  class  or  to  be  displayed  on  the  wall  or 
shelf. 

In  the  second  place  the  teacher  must  recognise  that 
children  differ  widely  in  their  powers  of  initiative  and 
in  their  ability  to  form  definite  aims  just  as  the  nature 
of  these  aims  themselves  will  differ.    Some  are  inventive 


INSTINCT  :    PURPOSIVE   ACTION  45 

and  full  of  spontaneity  and  freshness,  others  are  slower 
to  invent  but  perhaps  more  painstaking  in  the  perform- 
ance ;  these  latter  have  something  of  the  craftsman  in 
them  and  take  pride  in  good  workmanship.  Some  want 
to  work  at  a  thing  until  it  is  finished ;  others  are  eager 
in  thinking  out  their  plan  and  selecting  mater'al,  but 
their  purpose  weakens  when  these  initial  problems  are 
settled.  In  each  case  sympathy  and  help  are  needed 
where  the  purpose  is  weakest.  The  inventive  child  needs 
encouragement  to  aim  at  finishing  his  work  in  order  to 
test  the  plan  he  has  invented  ;  the  craftsman  child  needs 
help  in  formulating  an  aim  at  the  outset ;  and  the  child 
of  variable  moods  needs  persuasion  to  persevere  now  and 
again,  and  above  all  needs  safeguarding  from  interruption 
and  discouragement  on  the  rare  occasions  when  some 
pursuit  has  taken  more  permanent  hold  on  him. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE   MODIFICATION   OF   INSTINCT: 
MENTAL   GROWTH 

In  the  last  chapter  we  tried  to  show  the  connection  be- 
tween the  child's  early  instinctive  impulses  and  his  later 
purposive  and  voluntary  actions.  It  now  remains  to  con- 
sider more  particularly  the  child's  mental  growth.  It  has 
already  been  pointed  out  that  the  two  are  in  fact  in- 
separable, when  the  child  acts  he  also  thinks  and  feels, 
and  throughout  his  mental  life  these  three  factors  : 
activity,  thought,  and  feeling,  are  inseparably  connected 
and  are  perpetually  reacting  upon  one  another. 

In  the  early  stages  of  a  child's  life  the  things  perceived 
and  attended  to  are  those  which  excite  his  instinctive 
impulses.  The  effect  of  the  resulting  activity  is  neces- 
sarily to  make  his  perceptions  clearer  and  more  definite. 
His  attention  involves  the  use  of  all  available  senses  in 
the  further  investigation  of  the  object,  and  by  handling 
and  playing  with  it  he  learns  to  distinguish  it  more 
clearly  from  the  surrounding  objects  and  grows  familiar 
with  its  properties.  It  will  be  found  that  the  baby  of 
a  year  old  soon  tires  of  handling  the  object,  say,  a  doll, 
unless  it  offers  fresh  possibilities  by  being  capable  of 

46 


INSTINCT  :     MENTAL   GROWTH  47 

gradual  destruction,  or  unless  he  acquires  the  habit,  as 
some  children  will,  of  carrying  it  about.  His  perception 
of  it  is  clear  up  to  the  point  he  is  capable  of  reaching  and 
his  curiosity  is  temporarily  satisfied.  But  a  few  months 
later  it  is  offered  to  him  again,  and  now  his  knowledge  of 
the  human  body  has  increased  by  attention  to  his  own 
features  and  those  of  other  people.  He  is  now  able  to 
notice  that  the  doll  has  eyes  and  mouth  and  legs,  and  he 
finds  fresh  scope  for  activity  and  interest  in  pointing  out 
and  naming  these  over  and  over  again  ;  for  the  process 
of  connecting  percept  with  name  affords  intense  delight 
to  most  young  children.  At  this  stage  too,  or  a  little 
later,  he  will  begin  to  use  the  doll  in  definite  play,  give 
it  miUc  to  drink,  hold  a  cake  to  its  mouth,  and  so  on. 
He  has  the  idea  of  himself  drinking  milk  and  makes 
this  more  definite  and  general  by  using  it  in  his  games 
with  the  doll.  Here  again  repetition  will  follow  until 
the  process  is  too  familiar  to  interest  him.  Then  it  may 
either  be  dropped  or  more  probably  will  develop  into  a 
more  elaborate  game  of  the  same  kind.  In  all  this 
curiosity  plays  a  large  part,  aided  later  by  imitation. 
The  game  may  be  wholly  spontaneous,  except  perhaps 
for  the  first  suggestion  that  the  doll  should  be  given  its 
'  tea.'  In  the  process  the  child  gains,  as  we  have  said, 
clearer  perceptions  and  a  more  readily  available  stock  of 
ideas  with  regard  to  the  daily  activities  Avhich  he  repeats 
in  his  play.  Meanwhile  his  activities  have  been  going  on 
in  countless  other  directions.  He  sees  flowers  picked  and 
asks  for  them  and  handles  them,  sees  them  put  in  water 
and  afterwards  repeats  this  for  himself.     One  baby  not 


48        BEARINGS  OF   MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

quite  two  years  old  was  observed  picking  daisies  and 
putting  them  carefully  into  an  empty  can  which  he 
connected  with  water  from  having  seen  it  used  to  water 
the  plants.  Another  time  he  sees  the  cut  flowers,  daisies, 
made  up  into  a  chain  and  he  thus  gets  an  idea  of  divergent 
possibilities  in  respect  to  them.  Throughout  his  thought 
activities  are  connected  with  his  instincts  and  with  the 
interests  arising  out  of  them. 

Now  from  the  nature  of  things  these  activities  must 
be  selective,  just  as  all  attention  is  selective.  Hence  all 
activity  and  the  corresponding  clearness  of  perception 
and  increased  stock  of  ideas  implies  a  corresponding  neglect 
of  other  activities  and  a  corresponding  absence  of  clear 
percepts  and  ideas  in  other  directions.  The  young 
child's  activities  are  so  catholic  that  his  interests  appear 
to  embrace  the  whole  of  his  environment.  But  careful 
observation  discovers  the  beginnings  of  the  selective 
process.  Some  games  are  repeated  day  after  day  with  or 
without  assistance  from  his  elders,  others  are  apparently 
enjoyed  once  but  the  child  never  returns  to  them.  As 
he  grows  older  the  selective  process  is  more  clearly 
marked,  and  as  we  have  pointed  out,  helps  to  determine 
the  modifications  in  the  instinct  of  curiosity.  This 
specialisation  of  interest  always  means  specialisation  of 
knowledge.  The  child's  percepts  and  ideas  will  be  clearest 
along  the  lines  of  his  more  permanent  interests  owing  to 
the  manner  in  which  these  are  built  up,  and  he  will  be 
able  to  think  and  talk  more  readily  about  things  connected 
with  these  interests.  Hence  he  is  in  a  position  to  learn 
more,  to  see  more,  and  to  understand  more  along  these 


INSTINCT  :     MENTAL   GROWTH  49 

lines,  whilst  in  other  directions  he  has  only  vague  notions 
based  on  statements  half  understood  and  things  inade- 
quately observed.  "  He  that  hath,  to  him  shall  be 
given  "  is  certainly  true  of  knowledge  in  any  given  direc- 
tion. 

This  view  of  mental  growth  marks  an  important  dis- 
tinction between  modern  theory  and  the  view  of  earlier 
educationalists.  We  cannot  now  regard  the  child's  mind 
as  made  up  of  various  faculties,  '  observation,'  imagina- 
tion, memory,  and  so  on,  and  trace  his  progress  in  these 
quite  apart  from  the  material  on  which  he  has  exercised 
them.  If  a  child  is  said  to  be  '  observant '  we  must  know 
in  what  directions  he  has  practised  and  developed  his 
powers  of  observation,  and  in  what  other  directions  his 
interests  have  been  weak.  Then  we  may  reasonably 
expect  to  find  him  observant  where  he  has  been  interested 
and  has  acquired  knowledge,  and  may  equally  reasonably 
fear  to  find  him  '  unobservant '  in  other  respects.  The 
street  boy  is  observant  in  his  own  sphere  but  he  will 
prove  a  poor  guide  in  a  country  lane  and  may  be  a  dull 
boy  in  school.  Thus  the  modern  theory  disposes  of  the 
convenient  educational  notion  of  '  formal '  training, 
according  to  which  the  subjects  to  be  taught  in  school 
might  be  selected  each  for  their  supposed  value  in  training 
some  faculty.  Thus  by  teaching  arithmetic  to  ensure 
accuracy,  needlework  for  neatness,  nature  study  for 
observation,  literature  for  imagination,  and  so  on,  we 
might  hope  to  turn  out  a  child  who  was  in  general  and 
for  all  purposes  accurate,  neat,  observant,  and  imagina- 
t:ive.    In  actual  fact  we  find  the  process  of  mental  growth 


50        BEARINGS   OF   MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

to  be  specific  in  each  case,  and  indeed  to  some  extent 
special  training  in  one  subject  may  tend  to  prevent  the 
exercise  in  other  directions  of  the  particular  faculty  we 
believed  ourselves  to  be  cultivating.  The  more  absorbing 
the  interest  and  the  more  effective  therefore  in  stimulat- 
ing the  activities  of  the  child  or  adult,  the  less  time  and 
energy  will  there  be  for  other  interests  and  the  more 
closely  will  habits  of  thought  and  procedure  be  con- 
nected with  the  favourite  pursuit. 

The  cruder  forms  of  this  theory  of  formal  training 
have  long  been  abandoned,  but  it  is  unfortunate  that  its 
terminology  still  survives  in  some  even  recent  books  on 
education.  Meanwhile  the  question  of  whether  any 
transference  of  mental  power  acquired  in  one  direction 
to  other  allied  subjects  is  possible,  and  if  so  under  what 
conditions  and  to  what  extent,  is  still  a  point  of  dispute 
among  experimentalists.  Here  we  need  only  remark 
that  such  transfer  where  it  exists  at  all  appears  to  be  due 
to  the  cultivation  of  an  intelligent  attitude  of  mind 
which  enables  us  to  attack  fresh  matters  more  effectively. 
It  is  the  '  concept  of  method '  which  is  transferred,  not 
any  specific  improvement  in  '  faculty.' 

The  practical  results  of  all  this  for  the  teacher  would 
seem  to  be  somewhat  as  follows  : 

I.  He  must  aim  at  providing  stimulus  and  opportunity 
for  the  exercise  of  a  number  of  instinctive  activities  and 
for  the  development  of  wide  interests.  Luckily  the 
inter-connections  of  human  knowledge  are  so  numerous 
that  the  child  readily  passes  from  one  already  de- 
veloped interest  to  another.     We  have  pointed  out  the 


INSTINCT  :     MENTAL   GROWTH  51 

danger  of  neglecting  to  stimulate  aims  and  activities 
connected  with  the  social  instincts,  and  these  activities 
vv^ill  assure  the  growth  of  social  ideas  and  prepare  the 
vsray  to  intelligent  citizenship.  But  there  is  a  further 
risk  of  being  content  with  narrow  opportunities  and 
interests  because  the  child  is  '  happy  '  in  the  interests  he 
already  has.  This  is  generally  a  greater  danger  in  home 
education  than  at  school,  where  a  fairly  wide  curriculum 
is  usually  planned  out  and  where  '  narrowness '  is  looked 
upon  with  suspicion.  Many  adults,  however,  find  them- 
selves regretting  that  incipient  tastes  for,  say,  music  or 
constructive  work  were  neglected  when  they  were 
children  until  the  desire  for  such  pursuits  died  away. 

Instinctive  impulses  are  strong  while  they  last,  but 
many  of  them  appear  to  be  transitory.  Thus  adults 
and  even  children  often  lose  all  interest  in  constructive 
work  owing  to  lack  of  opportunity  and  encouragement, 
and  the  keen  curiosity  of  the  normal  child  lapses  into 
middle-aged  apathy,  or,  even  worse,  into  incessant  'gossip,' 
if  it  is  not  provided  with  proper  stimulus. 

2.  It  is  important  to  see  that  the  child's  interests  and 
activities  work  progressively,  and  that  he  does  not  merely 
satisfy  his  instincts  by  a  repetition  which  fails  to  produce 
effective  mental  growth.  Children  left  to  themselves 
sometimes  prove  inventive  and  progressive,  but  they 
may  also  stagnate  for  want  of  fresh  ideas  and  repeat  the 
same  game  or  make  the  same  pictures  without  getting 
any  further.  This  danger  has  been  pointed  out  by  Dewey, 
and  it  is  perhaps  not  one  which  teachers  are,  as  a  rule, 
likely  to  overlook.     But  they  may  blame  the  system  of 


52        BEARINGS   OF   MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

freedom  in  education  for  the  stagnation  because  they 
confuse  freedom  in  working  out  activities  with  freedom 
from  fresh  stimulus.  On  the  other  hand,  it  would  be 
rash  to  assert  that  the  child  gets  no  benefit  from  this 
seemingly  monotonous  repetition  of  an  activity,  provided 
that  it  is  genuinely  interested.  But  children  may  fall 
into  the  habit  of  occupying  themselves  without  using 
their  full  powers,  and  it  is  for  the  teacher  to  provide  at 
least  the  stimulus  to  progress  further.  Suggestion,  fresh 
material,  observation  of  other  children  all  serve  a  useful 
purpose  in  such  cases.  Moreover  the  teacher  is  respon- 
sible for  providing  material  likely  to  lead  the  child  in 
directions  that  are  permanently  useful.  He  may  legiti- 
mately have  in  view  at  any  given  stage  the  child's  later 
school  life,  just  as  the  school  as  a  whole  must  keep  in 
view  adult  life  after  school.  It  is  only  in  this  way  that 
he  can  help  the  child  to  secure  those  stocks  of  ideas  and 
memories  which  will  help  to  easy  and  rapid  progress. 
Moreover,  if  he  fail  in  this  he  will  find  the  child  lacking 
in  that  spontaneity  of  purpose  which  is  most  effective  as 
a  driving  force.  Much  is  often  done  at  the  Kinder- 
garten stage  to  encourage  children  to  develop  interests 
which  will  help  them  in  such  subjects  as  history,  geo- 
graphy, and  science,  but  the  value  of  this  is  apt  to  be 
lost  by  formality  and  lack  of  spontaneity  in  later  school 
methods.  Thus  the  older  child  finds  his  former  activities 
repressed  or  guided  in  directions  which  he  only  half 
understands  and  he'rapidly  becomes  '  bored  '  with  school 
work. 

3.  But  perhaps  the  teacher's  most  difficult  task  is  that 


INSTINCT  :    MENTAL   GROWTH  53 

of  helping  the  child  to  overcome  the  difficvilties  which 
he  meets  with  in  carrying  out  his  aims.  It  has  already 
been  pointed  out  that  spontaneous  purpose  provides  the 
best  incentive  to  this,  but  the  teacher's  aid  is  constantly- 
needed.  Indeed  it  is  only  by  realising  and  acting  on  this 
that  he  can  finally  meet  the  contention  that  spon- 
taneity and  freedom  in  education  leads  to  selfishness 
and  softness  and  makes  a  capricious  and  backboneless 
adult. 

We  have  already  remarked  that  critics  neglect  the 
influence  of  the  social  instincts  in  humanising  a  child's 
aims  and  helping  him  to  unselfishness.  We  may  here 
add  that  they  neglect  the  effects  of  habit  and  of  the  growth 
of  the  relatively  permanent  and  dominant  interests  in 
overcoming  intellectual  and  practical  difiicvilties.  More- 
over the  instinct  of  self-respect  makes  children  desirous 
of  doing  good  work  and  willing  to  take  pains  to  attain  a 
higher  standard  if  only  it  is  set  before  them  at  a  propitious 
moment.  Every  child  should  at  times  do  what  is  tempor- 
arily distasteful  to  him  but  he  should  do  it  if  possible 
at  the  bidding  of  some  instinctive  impulse  or  of  some 
permanent  interest  which  is  strong  enough  to  make  him 
want  to  persevere.  The  end  which  demands  the  drudgery 
should  be  something  which  the  child  has  set  before  him- 
self, not  something  forced  upon  him  by  others.  Children, 
for  instance,  are  apt  to  begin  making  Christmas  presents 
and  then  to  find  the  task  of  completing  them  somewhat 
irksome.  At  this  stage  they  should  make  a  decision  either 
to  give  up  the  attempt  altogether  or  to  w^ork  hard, 
perhaps  doing  a  certain  amount  each  day,  so  as  to  finish 


54        BEARINGS   OF   MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

the  present  in  time.  If  they  choose  the  latter  alternative 
it  remains  for  the  teacher  to  give  opportunities  for  the 
work  and  by  encouragement  and  perhaps  occasional  help 
to  see  that  the  thing  is  done.  Of  course,  too,  it  is  im- 
portant to  see  that  the  work  is  really  within  the  child's 
powers  without  undue  hardship,  and  the  more  impatient 
and  capricious  children  need  at  times  to  be  limited  in 
their  ambitions  or  they  will  become  disgusted  with  all 
such  work.  The  following  examples  may  serve  to  illus- 
trate what  is  meant. 

A  rather  '  idle  '  child  of  seven  who  disliked  the  few 
attempts  she  had  made  at  sewing,  and  indeed  was  seldom 
fond  of  any  form  of  steady  careful  work,  yet  spent 
some  time  for  several  days  in  sewing  two  pieces  of  stuff 
together  to  make  a  doll's  blanket.  Nor  did  she  complain, 
although,  in  order  that  the  sewing  might  be  fairly  secure, 
a  certain  standard  of  workmanship  was  required  of  her, 
which  involved  unpicking  and  starting  again  several 
times.  When  asked  about  the  work  afterwards  she 
remarked  :  "  I  did  not  like  doing  it,  but  I  wanted  so 
much  to  finish  it."  It  must  be  noted  that  the  blanket 
was  begun  at  the  child's  own  request  and  that  she  was 
not  urged  to  finish  it,  but  worked  at  it  quite  voluntarily 
and  steadily,  although  she  generally  played  over  and 
seemed  unable  to  attend  to  any  bit  of  work  enforced 
by  others. 

The  same  spontaneity  of  effort  must  be  sought  in 
intellectual  work,  and  can  only  be  secured  by  following 
the  lines  of  instinct  and  the  gradually  developing  interests 
and  by  making  them  supply  the  driving  force  to  carry 


INSTINCT  :     MENTAL    GROWTH  55 

the  child  through  the  bit  of  drudgery.  A  chiki  of  six 
could  write  in  large  characters  sufficiently  easily  to  take 
pleasure  in  writing  letters.  Presently  his  imitative 
tendency  and  positive  self-feeling  made  him  wish  to 
direct  his  envelope  himself.  It  was  explained  to  him 
that  to  do  this  he  must  both  write  smaller  and  take 
pains  to  write  clearly  and  without  crossing  out,  and  that 
therefore  he  must  write  the  address  first  correctly  on  a 
paper  and  then  copy  it  on  to  the  envelope.  He  agreed, 
but  the  effort  of  careful  writing  and  copying  proved  too 
much  for  him  and  he  decided  to  give  it  up  and  have  the 
envelope  addressed  for  him.  After  an  interval,  during 
which  he  wrote  several  letters,  he  was  asked  whether  he 
would  like  to  direct  an  envelope  again.  He  assented 
eagerly,  and  this  time,  although  the  same  careful  procedure 
was  followed,  succeeded  in  completing  the  address  satis- 
factorily. The  drudgery  of  writing  a  thing  twice  and 
with  great  care,  which  he  would  almost  certainly  have 
resented  had  it  been  imposed  upon  him  arbitrarily,  fitted 
in  with  his  general  interest,  and  he  saw  the  reason  and 
necessity  for  it. 

In  both  the  above  cases  it  will  be  noticed  that  a  cer- 
tain standard  of  work  was  demanded,  for  which  however 
a  reason  was  given  which  the  child  could  readily  under- 
stand and  appreciate.  There  is  indeed  no  reason  why 
children  should  acqvxire  a  habit  of  doing  slipshod  work 
and  scrambling  through  their  tasks  in  an  "  Oh,  it  will 
do  "  style,  when  better  things  are  really  within  their 
powers.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  important  not  to 
discourage    and    disgust    them    by    setting    a    standard 


56        BEARINGS    OF   MODERN    PSYCHOLOGY 

beyond  their  reach,  or  one  which  they  see  no  object  in 
attaining. 

4.  It  must  be  remembered  that  appeals  to  interest  are 
always  relative  in  value,  not  absolute.  We  attend  spon- 
taneously to  whatever  has  the  highest  interest  value  out 
of  the  possibilities  before  us.  And  the  result  necessarily 
varies  both  with  our  environment  and  with  our  own 
mental  and  physical  condition.  A  book  which  engrosses 
us  when  in  good  health  seems  hopelessly  dull  after  an 
illness ;  and  vice  versa,  the  silly  novel  which  amuses  us 
during  convalescence  cannot  hold  our  attention  for  five 
minutes  when  we  are  well.  Moreover  the  environment 
may  present  many  conflicting  claims  on  our  interest  or 
only  one  that  really  appeals  to  us.  The  work  which  we 
enjoyed  yesterday  seems  thoroughly  distasteful  to-day, 
when  a  friend  urges  us  to  go  fishing  with  him.  All  this 
is  plain  enough  to  introspection,  and  it  is  evident  that 
this  variability  of  interest  values  is  likely  to  be  even 
greater  in  the  case  of  children,  since  their  dominant 
interests  are  less  fixed  and  powerful  and  they  have  less 
experience  in  discounting  the  attractions  of  temporary 
excitements.  It  may  be  necessary  therefore  for  the 
teacher  to  see  that  the  relative  value  of  the  more  per- 
manently useful  interests  is  high,  i.e.  that  the  child 
is  not  unduly  distracted  by  conflicting  claims  on  his 
attention  and  by  perpetual  excitement.  To  let  children 
follow  out  spontaneous  interests  and  instincts  need  not 
mean  subjecting  them  to  a  continual  stimulus  of  exciting 
distractions  and  watching  them  jump  from  one  to 
another  like  a  puppy  in  a  strange  garden.    Such  continual 


INSTINCT  :     MENTAL   GROWTH  57 

excitement  tends  to  prevent  the  formation  o£  the  more 
permanent  interests  and  leaves  the  child  no  time  to  get 
a  real  hold  of  the  new  ideas  which  crowd  in  upon  him. 
Observation  of  young  children  up  to  three  or  four  years 
of  age  in  a  normal  home  environment  suggests  that  the 
natural  course  of  development  is  a  period  of  excitement 
when  new  powers  and  new  experiences  seem  to  come 
upon  the  child  with  a  rush,  followed  by  a  period  of  com- 
parative calm,  during  which  he  repeats  and  perfects 
the  activities  just  discovered  and  becomes  familiar  with 
the  new  experiences.  Then  there  is  a  fresh  burst  of 
growth  and  keen  interest,  followed  by  another  calm,  and 
so  on.  Possibly  some  sequence  of  this  sort  is  the  healthy 
form  of  growth  throughout  childhood.  If  so  the  teacher's 
function  must  be  to  give  scope  and  opportunities  to  the 
child  during  the  period  of  rapid  growth  by  helping  with 
material,  with  sympathy  and  with  information  as  needed, 
but  to  be  prepared  for  the  lapse  into  a  calm  and  perhaps 
half-bored  state  afterwards.  During  this  period  the  child 
gets  practice  in  working  at  things  after  the  first  keenness 
has  worn  off,  and  meanwhile  he  also  gets  valuable  mental 
rest.  It  may  be  expected  too  that  the  child  will  need 
more  help  and  companionship  during  this  period,  but  to 
attempt  to  stimulate  him  continually  up  to  the  level  of 
the  active  period  is  to  risk  over-pressure. 

5.  It  is  useful  to  observe  the  child's  behaviour  when 
his  interest  is  immediate,  i.e.  where  his  purpose  is  to 
obtain  the  pleasure  arising  out  of  the  work  for  its  own 
sake,  and  again  when  his  interest  is  indirect  and  he  does 
the  work  as  a  means  to  an  end.     The  best  results  are 


58        BEARINGS   OF   MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

probably  secured  where  both  forms  of  interest  are  present, 
then  the  end  in  view  may  serve  to  carry  the  child  over 
the  less  directly  pleasurable  portions  of  the  work.  Of 
this  we  have  already  given  examples.  Children  vary 
greatly  however,  both  in  their  ability  to  work  for  an 
indirect  end, — a  matter  which  obviously  depends  partly 
on  age, — and  in  their  treatment  of  the  means.  In  some 
cases  eagerness  to  arrive  at  the  desired  result  leads  them 
to  hurry  over  the  intermediate  stage  and  their  work 
becomes  slipshod  and  poor. 

6.  The  rejection  of  the  theory  of  formal  training  has 
a  positive  as  well  as  a  negative  side.  On  the  one  hand 
it  obliges  the  teacher  to  look  with  suspicion  on  the  in- 
clusion of  any  subject  in  the  curriculum  on  the  ground, 
or  even  partly  on  the  ground,  that  it  is  '  good  training.' 
Each  subject  must  be  justified  on  its  intrinsic  merits. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  school  should  provide  specific 
training  in  most  modes  of  activity  which  it  is  thought 
essential  for  the  child  to  practise  in  later  life.  As  regards 
'  work,'  this  demand  is  fairly  well  met  in  many  schools 
by  supplying  a  wide  general  education,  to  be  followed  by 
specialisation  in  any  particular  direction  selected.  But 
it  is  usually  acknowledged  now  that  education  should 
lead  to  intelligent  use  of  leisure  as  well  as  to  ability  to 
work,  and  very  few  schools  realise  what  is  needed  for  this. 
Teachers  still  fail  to  recognise  that  the  child  requires 
actual  practice  in  the  spontaneous  use  of  leisure.  It  is 
not  enough  to  stimulate  interest  in  various  subjects — or 
even  in  various  occupations — which  are  judged  suitable 
for  leisure  employments  or  hobbies.    Since  these  are  done 


INSTINCT  :    MENTAL   GROWTH  59 

under  the  direction  of  the  teacher  the  child's  attitude 
lacks  spontaneity.  He  needs,  in  fact,  actual  practice  in 
choosing  occupations  for  his  leisure  time  and  employing 
himself  on  them.  He  needs  practice  in  making  his  own 
plans  and  in  learning  what  information  and  help  he  needs 
and  where  to  go  for  them.  Some  homes  provide  such 
practice,  but  many  have  neither  the  space  nor  the 
necessary  material,  including  probably  tools  or  books ; 
or  the  knowledge  and  skill  to  give  help  and  encourage- 
ment may  be  lacking.  Opportunities  of  the  desired  kind 
are,  it  is  true,  provided  in  various  schools  for  young 
children,  and  in  some  respects  they  are  afforded  by  the 
Universities ;  but  between  these  stages  there  is  a  gap 
where  little  or  nothing  is  attempted.  Many  boarding 
schools  for  boys  and  an  increasing  number  for  girls  seem 
to  think  it  essential  to  see  that  practically  all  spare  time 
is  '  occupied,'  more  or  less  compulsorily,  by  games  or 
other  pursuits.  But  the  element  of  compulsion  takes 
away  much  of  the  value  of  these  pursuits  for  the  specific 
purpose  here  considered,  however  pleasurably  the 
majority  of  the  boys  may  be  occupied.  Day  schools  are 
apt  to  neglect  the  problem  of  leisure  altogether.  Thus 
for  those  whose  education  does  not  extend  to  the 
University  stage  there  is  no  practice,  at  any  rate  after 
early  childhood,  in  the  distribution  of  time  between 
various  leisure  pursuits,  still  less  is  any  help  given  in 
learning  the  relation  of  these  to  work.  Hence  some 
people  never  play  at  all,  while  others  never  work  unless 
they  are  obliged.  Moreover,  even  those  who  do  '  play ' 
fail  to  get  the  maximum  of  enjoyment  and  interest  out 


6o        BEARINGS   OF   MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

of  it  because  they  have  such  a  hmited  notion  of  its  pos- 
sibilities. And  this  not  necessarily  because  they  have 
not,  while  at  school,  been  interested  in  and  enjoyed  doing 
a  variety  of  things,  but  because  these  things  have  been 
marked  off  in  their  mind  as  *  work.'  They  never  spon- 
taneously occupied  spare  time  with  them  at  school  and 
have  had  no  practice  in  selecting  an  occupation  to  suit 
their  health  or  mood,  or  in  overcoming,  by  their  own 
efforts,  the  initial  difficulties  of  finding  the  materials, 
whether  books,  wood,  tools,  or  paints  needed  for  their 
purpose.  In  default  of  such  specific  practice  few  people 
have  the  initiative  and  energy  to  develop  a  '  hobby,' 
and  those  who  do  so  are  needlessly  restricted  in  their 
choice  by  lack  of  knowledge  or  imagination.  Every  child 
should  have  practice  in  occupying  himself  pleasurably 
and  intelligently,  both  in  co-operation  with  others  and 
by  himself,  and  of  occupying  himself  in  ways  that  are 
neither  harmful  to  himself  nor  objectionable  to  other 
people. 

The  practical  question  remains  as  to  how  all  this 
spontaneity  and  freedom  is  to  be  attained  in  a  com- 
munity like  the  school,  where  there  are  many  diversities 
of  character  and  temperament  and  consequently  many 
divergent  aims  and  interests.  The  problem  has  already 
being  partially  solved,  as  we  have  said,  in  some  of  the 
best  schools  for  young  children.  It  is  only  beginning  to 
be  recognised  as  a  problem  in  the  later  stages  of  school 
life.  Possibly  the  solution  here  will  be  arrived  at  along 
somewhat  similar  lines.  There  will  be  a  great  reduction 
in  the  time  given  to  class  teaching  in  favour  of  individual 


INSTINCT  :     MENTAL    GROWTH  6i 

work  or  co-operative  work  in  small  groups,  and  there  will 
be  much  greater  freedom  of  choice  of  occupation  for  the 
pupils  themselves.  Class  teaching  is  seldom  an  intelligent 
method  except  for  lessons  of  the  story  or  narrative  types, 
where  it  is  waste  of  time  to  retell  the  tale  to  everyone,  and 
where  also  there  would  be  a  loss  in  affect  from  lack  of  the 
stimulus  of  a  group  of  sympathetic  listeners — a  stimulus 
which  of  course  effects  the  teacher  as  well  as  the  taught. 
There  is  room  also  for  '  discussions,'  but  these  generally 
arise  naturally  out  of  the  work  in  hand  and  are  more 
effective  when  the  group  discussing  is  a  comparatively 
small  one.  There  may  also  be  room  for  '  demonstration  ' 
when  a  number  of  boys  are  puzzled  about  a  particular 
point  and  can  be  dealt  with  together.  For  the  rest, 
individual  or  group  work  seems  ifl  general  the  more 
natural  method,  and  these  are,  moreover,  the  ways  in 
which  boys  will  be  expected  to  work  later  on  when  they 
have  left  school. 

Greater  freedom  and  spontaneity  need  not,  however, 
mean  that  speciahsation  should  be  allowed  recklessly  and 
that  boys  should,  for  example,  freely  give  up  mathematics 
to  work  at  carpentry.  It  might  however  mean,  and  there 
is  much  in  the  study  of  children's  interests  to  support 
this  view,  that  boys  should  be  allowed  to  '  block  '  subjects 
to  some  extent,  e.g.  to  do  a  good  deal  of  history  or 
carpentry  while  the  interest  in  these  subjects  is  keen, 
and  then  to  do  a  good  deal  of  something  else.  The 
chopping  up  of  work  into  limited  periods  by  a  time- 
table is  necessary  enough  under  the  system  of  class 
teaching  where  the  criterion  of  fatigue  and  boredom 


62        BEARINGS   OF   MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

must  be  that  of  the  weakest  pupil — but  it  can  hardly  be 
regarded  as  natural,  nor  indeed  is  it  a  particularly  good 
preparation  for  later  life.  Greater  freedom  might  also 
mean  some  choice  in  the  allotment  of  time — perhaps 
after  a  minimum  standard  in  certain  subjects  had  been 
attained — in  addition  to  that  practice  in  the  use  of 
leisure,  whose  importance  we  have  emphasised.  Schools 
should  also  provide  opportunity  in  work  hours  for  co- 
operation and  for  other  activities  connected  with  the 
social  instincts  which  are  at  present  only  possible  in 
games — a  reform  which  might  render  superfluous  the 
somewhat  pathetic  claim  made  for  the  public  schools 
that  at  least  '  character  '  is  '  trained  '  and  '  developed ' 
on  their  playing  fields. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE   GROWTH  OF   HABITS   AND 
SENTIA/IENTS 

Problems  connected  with  the  formation  of  habits  have 
always  claimed  a  large  space  in  educational  writings,  and 
the  discussion  of  them  often  ranges  over  a  wide  field,  in- 
cluding moral,  intellectual  and  physical  activities.  The 
word  habit  itself  is  fortunately  less  ambiguous  than  many 
that  are  used  in  educational  psychology ;  it  is  applied  to  that 
large  class  of  automatic  or  semi-automatic  reactions  which 
are  learnt  in  the  course  of  experience.  Habits  are  thus 
distinguished  on  the  one  hand  from  instinctive  reactions 
which  are  unlearnt,  and  on  the  other  from  voluntary  or 
purposive  actions  which  require  at  least  a  minimum  of 
thought.  The  possibiHty  of  forming  habits  at  all  rests 
on  the  fact  that  an  action  once  done  in  a  certain  way  in 
response  to  any  given  stimulus,  tends,  provided  that  its 
consequences  were  not  unpleasant,  to  be  repeated  in 
that  way  the  next  time  the  same  stimulus  occurs.  Habits 
grow  up  in  various  ways  which  deserve  the  teacher's 
consideration,  since  the  formation  of  useful  habits  in  his 
pupils  is  expected  of  him,  and  will  indeed  save  him  much 
trouble  and  friction.     He  also  needs  to  know  how  far 

63 


64        BEARINGS   OF   MODERN    PSYCHOLOGY 

these  habits  can  be  relied  upon  when  the  pvipil  is  placed 
in  a  somewhat  different  environment  from  that  in  which 
they  were  acquired. 

1.  Habits  are  formed  in  close  connection  with  instincts, 
and  are  often  the  direct  outcome  of  instinctive  reactions. 
The  instinctive  impulse  is  in  many  cases  sufficiently 
indefinite  to  be  capable  of  satisfaction  in  a  variety  of 
ways.  What  inclines  the  child  to  choose  any  one  of 
these  ways  in  the  first  instance  is  for  the  most  part  in- 
explicable, though  careful  observation  may  give  us  the 
key  to  the  problem  in  individual  cases.  Once  chosen, 
however,  that  particular  reaction  is  more  likely  to  be 
chosen  again  next  time,  and  so  on,  until  it  becomes  a 
habit.  We  have  already  discussed  this  point  and  need 
only  mention  it  here  for  the  sake  of  completeness. 

2.  Habits  are  also  formed  as  the  result  of  purposive 
action  by  which  we  deliberately  set  ourselves  to  acquire 
a  given  facility  or  skill.  In  this  case  the  process  generally 
begins  by  a  series  of  trials  and  errors  until  the  successful 
act  is  performed  more  or  less  by  chance  ;  after  this 
error  often  occurs  again,  but  the  correct  action  happens 
more  frequently  and  is  more  easily  recognisable,  and 
the  process  goes  on  for  a  longer  or  shorter  period  until 
finally  all  the  wrong  acts  are  omitted  and  the  action 
becomes  both  correct  and  automatic.  Such  methods 
of  learning  are  familiar  enough  in  cycling,  playing  games, 
such  as  tennis  or  cricket,  sawing,  and  so  on. 

In  other  cases  the  right  action  is  easily  recognised  from 
the  first,  but  the  learner  is  slow  and  uncertain  in  accom- 
plishing it,  and  practice  is  directed  towards  attaining 


GROWTH  OF  HABITS  AND  SENTIMENTS      65 

speed  as  well  as  accuracy.  Hammering  in  nails,  typing, 
shorthand  writing,  playing  scales  may  serve  to  illustrate 
this  second  class.  In  all  cases,  since  practice  makes  the 
process  more  automatic,  the  attention  is  gradually  set 
free  and  can  be  turned  to  other  things.  Thus  when 
learning  to  cycle  we  gradually  become  able  to  notice  the 
scenery,  talk  to  a  friend,  or  even  read  a  book,  and  in 
games  of  skill  we  grow  able  to  watch  the  movements  of 
our  opponent.  To  play  such  a  game  as  tennis  well  in- 
volves the  acquirement  of  a  whole  number  of  automatic 
reactions,  any  series  of  which  can  be  started  off  by  the 
mere  decision  where  to  send  the  ball.  Most  players  have 
certain  special  strokes  which  they  are  generally  able  to 
accomplish  successfully,  i.e.  in  which  the  automatism 
is  fairly  perfect,  and  one  of  the  marks  of  the  feebler 
player  is  his  inability  to  check  his  favourite  stroke  even 
when  in  that  particular  case  it  is  merely  playing  into  the 
hands  of  his  opponent. 

The  facility  with  which  any  given  skill  can  be  acquired 
obviously  depends  largely  on  the  development  and  con- 
trol of  the  muscles.  Hence  teachers  need  to  give  heed 
to  physiological  evidence  as  to  the  age  when  the  various 
muscles  can  be  safely  exercised  and  to  determine  what 
and  when  to  teach  accordingly.  Much  time  is  wasted 
if  the  child  begins  too  young  even  if  no  serious  strain 
results,  and  on  the  other  hand  facility  may  be  lost  by 
beginning  too  late.  As  a  rule,  if  a  child  appears  unduly 
slow  or  stupid  in  acquiring  any  given  dexterity  he  should 
give  up  the  attempt  for  a  time,  even  if  the  occupation 
is  one  generally  suited  to  his  age. 

M.P,  —  5 


66        BEARINGS    OF   MODERN    PSYCHOLOGY 

Experimental  investigation  into  the  effect  of  practice 
on  the  process  of  acquiring  some  skill  such  as  that  of 
telegraphy  or  typing  confirms  what  introspection  leads 
us  to  expect,  viz.  that  periods  of  good  progress  are  fol- 
low^ed  by  intervals  of  little  or  no  improvement.  Pro- 
gress, in  fact,  is  usually  rapid  at  the  beginning,  then  there 
comes  a  '  plateau,'  as  it  has  been  aptly  termed,  where 
continual  practice  seems  to  have  no  effect,  then  another 
'  hill,'  and  so  on,  until  the  limits  of  the  individual's  skill 
in  that  particular  direction,  or  of  his  perseverance,  are 
reached.  The  same  characteristics  seem  to  mark  progress 
in  intellectual  skills,  such  as  learning  a  foreign  language, 
and,  incidentally,  observation  suggests  that  a  baby's  pro- 
gress in  learning  his  native  tongue  is  of  much  the  same 
nature.  It  must  be  noted  that  practice  during  the 
'  plateau  '  periods  is  not  wasted,  but  is  rewarded  by  more 
rapid  improvement  when  the  next  '  hill '  is  reached. 

It  follows  from  this  that  in  the  numerous  cases  where 
practice  is  demanded  in  school  work  the  teacher  should 
be  on  the  look  out  for  the  '  plateaus,'  since  it  is  at  this 
stage  that  the  child  is  likely  to  be  discouraged,  and  to 
need  more  help  or  the  stimulus  of  a  varied  treatment  of 
the  subject  matter  should  this  be  possible.  As  long  as 
rapid  progress  is  being  made  the  pleasures  of  success 
will  be  enough  to  carry  most  children  along  with  but 
little  attention  from  the  teacher.  Older  children,  too, 
like  adults,  may  be  encouraged  if  they  understand  that 
unevenness  of  progress  is  normal  and  that  hard  work 
during  the  unprogressive  stages  will  be  effective  in  the 
end. 


GROWTH  OF  HABITS  AND  SENTIMENTS       67 

3.  Again,  habits  may  be  formed  deliberately  by  volun 
tary  repetition  of  certain  reactions  in  response  to  certain 
stimuli.  Thus,  invalids  in  particular,  healthy  people  to 
some  extent,  deliberately  form  habits  of  getting  up  and 
going  to  bed  at  certain  hours,  of  eating  certain  foods 
at  certain  times,  of  taking  daily  exercise,  and  so  on.  In 
these  cases  there  is  no  special  skill  to  acquire  and  the 
process  of  trial  and  error  is  unnecessary.  The  automatic 
result  is  secured  by  repeating  the  act  deliberately  at  first 
until  gradually  the  thing  works  of  itself.  Some  people 
are,  of  course,  more  forgetful  or  less  determined  in  form- 
ing the  habit  than  others,  and  hence  the  process  takes 
longer  and  may  never  be  quite  so  successful.  Moreover, 
if  the  desired  habit  be  even  slightly  distasteful  the  re- 
action never  becomes  really  automatic  unless  custom 
removes  the  feeling  of  distaste.  This  explains  why  people 
who  have  got  up  at  a  certain  hour  for  weeks  or  months 
may  still  not  acquire  a  fixed  habit  of  getting  up  at  that 
time  so  that  they  do  it  without  effort  and  as  a  matter  of 
course.  Repetition  only  leads  to  automatic  reaction 
when  the  process  is  either  indifferent  or  pleasurable. 

Many  of  the  habits  formed  by  children  are  conveniently 
classed  under  this  head  because  they  are  the  result  of 
deliberate  repetition.  But  in  a  large  number  of  cases 
the  purpose  for  which  the  habit  is  formed  is  not  realised 
by  the  child  at  all  but  only  by  the  elders  who  see  that 
the  action  is  dully  performed.  In  this  semi-mechanical 
way  children  may  form  habits  of  putting  away  their 
toys  at  bedtime,  of  brushing  their  hair,  of  having  a  cold 
bath,  and  of  carrying  out  a  hundred  other  minor  matters 


68        BEARINGS   OF   MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

of  the  daily  routine.  But  the  absence  of  dehberate  pur- 
pose on  the  child's  part  may  lead  the  educator  to  fail 
unwittingly  in  his  attempt  to  make  the  habit  permanent. 
This  point  is  sometimes  overlooked  and  deserves  further 
consideration.  The  habitual  action  is  learnt  in  response 
to  a  certain  stimulus  so  that  the  sequence  of  stimulus- 
reaction  is  established  as  more  or  less  automatic.  The 
difficulty  in  the  case  of  children  who  appear  to  have 
formed  good  habits  is  to  find  exactly  what  stimulus  is 
influencing  them.  A  parent,  for  instance,  who  had 
trained  a  delicate  child  to  rest  every  morning  before 
dinner  believed  that  the  habit  was  fixed  and  that  the 
necessary  stimulus  was  merely  a  reminder  that  it  was 
twelve  o'clock.  But  when  the  child  was  left  in  charge 
of  a  friend  for  a  few  weeks  during  her  parents'  absence 
from  home,  it  was  found  that  she  frequently  refused  to 
go  to  rest  and,  if  persuaded  to  lie  down,  often  got  up 
afterwards  and  played  about.  In  this  case  obviously  the 
mother's  authority  had  been  the  really  effective  stimulus, 
and  the  habit  formed  was  that  of  obedience  to  her  wish 
and  not  that  of  resting  before  dinner.  Mistakes  of  this 
kind  are  constantly  made  by  so-called  '  good  disciplin- 
arians,' whether  parents  or  teachers,  who  believe  that 
the  children  under  their  care  are  acquiring  good  habits 
of  various  kinds,  whereas  in  reality  they  have  formed 
one  habit  only,  that  of  unreasoned  obedience  to  the  dis- 
ciplinarian's will :  their  lack  of  general  training  shows 
itself  in  a  depressing  manner  directly  her  influence  is 
removed. 

In  other  cases  the  stimulus  seems  to  include  and  to 


GROWTH  OF  HABITS  AND  SENTIMENTS       69 

depend  for  its  efficiency  upon  a  certain  environment  in 
connection  with  which  the  habit  has  been  formed.  Hence 
the  particular  stimulus  with  which  it  is  desirable  to  con- 
nect the  reaction  proves  quite  inadequate  by  itself.  A 
boy  of  seven  who  was  accustomed  at  home  to  look  after 
himself  in  such  matters  as  changing  his  shoes,  getting 
tidy  for  meals,  and  so  on,  lost  most  of  these  useful '  habits' 
when  he  went  away  from  home  on  a  visit,  kept  on  his 
wet  and  dirty  shoes,  came  to  dinner  with  hands  unwashed 
or  hair  unbrushed,  and  in  general  required  more  reminders 
and  attention  in  a  couple  of  days  than  he  needed  at  home 
in  as  many  months.  In  this  case  the  habits  were  con- 
nected too  closely  with  his  home  surroundings,  the  place 
where  he  took  off  his  shoes  and  the  peg  where  he  hung 
his  coat,  and  with  the  normal  routine  of  his  home  life. 

Cases  such  as  these  are  frequent  enough  and  mark  a 
relative  failure  in  training.  We  want  the  changing  of 
shoes  to  depend  on  the  fact  that  they  are  wet  and  dirty, 
not  on  the  aspect  of  the  hall  or  lobby  where  they  are 
generally  removed,  just  as  we  want  good  manners  and 
considerate  behaviour  to  be  habitual  throughout  a  child's 
life  and  not  merely  while  he  is  in  school.  And  the  failure 
in  training  may  show  itself  in  another  way.  The  child 
who  has  formed  excellent  habits  in  connection  with  the 
routine  of  home  or  school  may  be  less  able  to  cope  with  a 
change  in  his  accustomed  environment  than  the  happy-go- 
lucky  child  who  has  been  brought  up  under  less  orderly 
conditions.  If  anything  happens  to  interrupt  the  usual 
course  of  events  the  '  well-trained  '  child  may  be  abso- 
lutely at  a  loss,  his  habits  have  been  formed  too  mechani- 


70        BEARINGS   OF   MODERN    PSYCHOLOGY 

cally,  and  since  he  has  never  clearly  understood  the  reasons 
for  the  various  actions  he  has  learned  to  do  he  cannot 
adjust  his  behaviour  readily  to  different  conditions.  It  is 
possible  to  train  a  child  too  well,  if  he  has  acquired  his 
habits  blindly,  as  most  children  tend  to  do,  just  as  it  is 
possible  to  feed  him  too  carefully  so  that  the  least  change 
of  diet  gives  him  a  stomach-ache. 

4.  Finally,  habits  are  acquired  inadvertently.  Chance 
movements  made  once  or  twice  became  habitual.  These 
inadvertent  habits  often  form  a  sort  of  fringe  round 
skills  deliberately  learnt  and  round  habits  acquired 
through  purposive  repetition.  We  adopt  particular 
mannerisms  when  we  hold  a  stick  or  cup,  or  ride  a  bicycle, 
or  dress  and  undress,  and  we  even  assume  a  particular 
facial  expression  when  we  play  some  game.  Bad  habits, 
so  called,  fall  for  the  most  part  into  this  class,  though 
some  are  directly  connected  with  instinctive  impulses 
and  belong  to  class  (i).  Children  bite  their  nails,  frown, 
make  faces,  fidget  with  the  leaves  of  their  books,  scribble 
on  paper  or  on  their  desks,  all  more  or  less  automatically 
and  unconsciously.  Such  habits  are  specially  difficult 
to  get  rid  of  when,  like  some  of  those  just  mentioned, 
they  do  not  interfere  with  the  child's  attention  and 
interest,  or  with  the  majority  of  the  usual  school  occupa- 
tions. A  child  can  and  does  bite  his  nails  while  he  is 
reading,  or  listening  to  a  story,  and  even  in  the  intervals 
of  his  play  ;  indeed  whenever  his  fingers  are  not  actually 
occupied  with  something  else. 

Habits  are  useful  and  even  necessary  because  they  are 
automatic  and  thus  free  the  mind  from  an  obligation 


GROWTH  OF  HABITS  AND  SENTIMENTS      71 

to  consider  each  action  ^fresh  whenever  occasion  for  it 
arises ;  but  this  same  automatism  makes  them  harder  to 
check  or  alter  when  they  happen  to  be  undesirable.  In 
this  respect  they  resemble  instinctive  activities,  and  there 
is  the  same  objection  to  any  attempt  to  cure  them  by 
making  the  reaction  unpleasant  after  it  has  taken  place. 
Each  repetition  of  the  sequence  stimulus-reaction 
makes  this  sequence  more  fixed  and  automatic.  Hence 
the  important  point  is  to  prevent  the  reaction  taking 
place,  not  to  punish  the  child  after  it  has  occurred  and 
after  the  sequence  is  rendered  thereby  slightly  stronger. 
Moreover  the  automatic  nature  of  the  reaction  prevents 
the  child  from  readily  stopping  himself  in  time  even  when 
he  knows  punishment  will  follow.  Thus  to  punish, 
after  each  attack  of  passion,  a  child  who  has  acquired  a 
habit  of  giving  way  to  fits  of  temper  may  only  serve  to 
undermine  his  self-respect  without  helping  him  to  self- 
control.  The  better  plan  whenever  possible  is  to  attack 
'  bad  '  habits  either  by  removing  or  guarding  against  the 
stimulus  or  to  prevent  the  reaction  by  some  strong 
counter  impulse.  We  may  illustrate  what  is  meant  by 
reference  to  the  habit  of  biting  the  nails.  The  stimulus 
to  this  seems  to  be  a  certain  nervousness  combined  with 
unoccupied  fingers.  We  may  try  to  remove  this  stimulus 
on  the  one  hand  by  special  care  of  the  child's  general 
health,  and  on  the  other  by  keeping  his  hands  occupied 
at  moments  when  otherwise  he  is  likely  to  bite  his  nails. 
In  addition  to  this  we  may  give  some  special  inducement 
to  make  him  wish  to  cure  the  habit.  Many  children 
have  been  cured  of  biting  their  nails  by  a  present  of  a 


72        BEARINGS   OF   MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

manicure  case.  This  not  only  provides  fresh  occupation 
for  their  fingers  at  odd  moments  but,  more  important 
still,  arouses  a  pride  and  interest  in  the  appearance  of 
their  nails  which  may  prove  a  permanent  safeguard.  In 
nearly  all  cases  of  course  the  goodwill  and  co-operation  of 
the  child  is  important,  the  exception  being  where  the 
habit  may  be  made  worse  by  self-consciousness.  A  shy, 
nervous  child  who  is  awkward  and  walks  and  holds  him- 
self badly  may  be  made  worse  by  any  discussion  of  the 
matter,  however  much  he  wishes  to  improve.  The  best 
treatment  here  would  be  practice  in  gymnastics  and 
dancing,  where  he  will  learn  better  control  of  his  move- 
ments and  a  better  balance,  and  meanwhile  the  avoid- 
ance of  all  reference  to  his  awkwardness. 

We  must  now  pass  on  to  consider  a  further  and  im- 
portant development  of  the  law  of  habit  in  the  forma- 
tion of  what  are  called  sentiments.  A  sentiment  may  be 
described  as  an  habitual  attitude  of  mind  towards  any 
object  or  group  of  objects  or  towards  some  abstract  idea, 
which  attitude  grows  up  in  the  course  of  experience  as 
the  outcome  of  our  instinctive  activities  and  emotions 
and  the  general  trend  of  our  interests.  A  sentiment  is  in 
a  sense  compounded  of  a  number  of  potential  emotioril 
and  impulses,  any  one  of  which  we  may  feel  according 
to  the  circumstances  in  which  we  see  or  think  of  its  object. 
Thus  if  we  have  the  sentiment  of  love  to  any  person, 
we  not  only  desire  to  be  with  them  but  also  we  are  likely 
to  be  angry  with  anyone  who  hurts  them,  afraid  of  any 
serious  danger  to  them,  and  so  on.  Again,  a  patriotic 
person  feels  proud  when  he  hears  good  of  his  country 


GROWTH  OF  HABITS  AND  SENTIMENTS      73 

and  its  inhabitants,  shame  when  he  beheves  it  to  be 
concerned  in  what  is  bad,  anger  and  perhaps  fear  of 
those  who  attack  it  and  gratitude  towards  those  who 
benefit  it.  Other  sentiments  which  are  specially  im- 
portant in  the  case  of  children  are  those  of  dislike  or 
hatred,  espirit  de  corps,  the  aesthetic  sentiment, 
the  self-regarding  sentiment,  and  the  moral  senti- 
ment. 

Now  these  relatively  permanent  mental  attitudes 
necessarily  develop  slowly,  and  in  the  case  of  children 
in, particular  their  growth  is  closely  connected  with  the 
child's  activities.  Very  young  children,  for  instance, 
though  they  express  delight  in  the  presence  of  their 
mother  or  nurse  and  grief  when  she  goes  away  can  hardly 
be  said  to  possess  more  than  the  rudiments  of  a  sentiment 
of  love.  Later  on,  as  the  result  of  impulses  of  affection 
expressed  in  various  ways,  their  attitude  becomes  more 
defined  and  permanent ;  they  begin  perhaps  to  show 
resentment  towards  anything  that  seems  likely  to  hurt 
their  mother  and  to  make  efforts  to  please  her  and  to 
save  her  trouble,  which  show  that  there  is  an  element  of 
the  protective  emotion  in  their  attitude  towards  her. 
The  protective  instinct  indeed  forms  an  important  part 
of  what  we  call  the  sentiment  of  love  as  distinct  from  the 
more  passing  emotion  of  love.  This  fact  is  a  partial 
explanation  of  the  strong  sentiment  of  love  which 
children  often  have  towards  their  younger  brothers  and 
sisters,  or  towards  their  pets.  Here  the  protective  im- 
pulses are  constantly  aroused  and  satisfied  by  the  stimulus 
to  and  performance  of  various  acts  of  care  and  kindness. 


74        BEARINGS   OF   MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

whereas  in  the  case  of  elder  brothers  and  sisters  and 
parents  there  is  comparatively  little  scope  for  the 
exercise  of  such  impulses. 

The  most  effective  way  to  help  children  to  form  senti- 
ments is  thus  to  provide  opportunities  for  the  exercise 
of  instinctive  impulses  in  the  required  directions,  a  fact 
which  has  indeed  long  been  recognised  by  teachers.  To 
acquire  such  relatively  permanent  attitudes  of  mind  is 
a  necessary  supplement  to  a  training  in  good  habits,  and 
is  the  best  corrective  to  those  more  mechanical  forms 
of  training  which  we  criticised  earher  in  the  chapter. 
The  child's  training  to  be  really  effective  must  be  con- 
nected in  his  mind  with  some  reason  which  he  can  under- 
stand and  for  which  he  learns  to  feel  some  sentiment  of 
respect  and  appreciation.  Without  this  the  habit  is 
unlikely  to  stand  the  test  of  time  and  changed  conditions. 
The  habit  of  neatness,  for  example,  has  been  so  con- 
tinually encouraged  in  and  even  forced  upon  children 
that  were  repetition  alone  enough  there  could  hardly 
be  any  untidy  man  or  woman  left.  The  process  fails 
because  few  children  see  any  reason  for  tidiness  beyond 
that  of  necessary  obedience  to  authority,  and  have  no 
sentiment  in  regard  to  the  idea  of  tidiness  unless  one  of 
distaste  aroused  by  unwise  insistence  on  irksome  rules. 
In  such  a  case  the  educator  needs  not  merely  to  enforce 
rules,  however  necessary  something  of  this  may  be,  but 
to  make  sure  himself  exactly  why  such  rules  are  necessary 
and  to  consider  whether  the  child  can  appreciate  his 
reason.  The  two  most  obvious  reasons  for  tidiness  seem 
to  be  consideration  for  others  and  aesthetic  feeling.    All 


GROWTH  OF  HABITS  AND  SENTIMENTS      75 

children  can  understand  the  former  reason,  and  the  social 
instincts  supply  the  basis  upon  which  may  be  built  up  a 
sentiment  of  goodwill  towards  their  fellows  which 
includes  a  dislike  of  anything  that  gives  other  people 
unnecessary  trouble.  Where  the  trouble  saved  is  only 
that  of  the  individual  himself  the  matter  is  less  important 
and  the  need  for  tidiness  is  probably  best  learnt,  if  learnt 
at  all,  by  experience. 

Most  children,  too,  can  understand  and  appreciate  the 
aesthetic  reason  for  tidiness.  But  the  aesthetic  senti- 
ment, hke  other  sentiments,  develops  best  in  connec- 
tion with  the  child's  activities.  It  is  in  fact  merely  an 
habitual  attitude  of  mind  towards  the  objects  round  us 
which  prompts  us  to  look  at  them  critically  and  to  enjoy 
and  try  to  preserve  those  we  judge  to  be  beautiful  and 
to  dislike  and  try  to  remove  or  improve  the  others.  In 
children  it  is  encouraged  best  by  letting  them  share  in 
actual  attempts  to  make  their  surroundings  beautiful, 
allowing  freedom  for  their  own  taste  to  develop,  how- 
ever crude  their  judgments  may  seem.  Hence  it  is  easier 
for  them  to  prefer  to  keep  a  room  tidy  if  they  also  help 
to  make  it  look  beautiful  by  the  growth  and  arrangement 
of  flowers,  the  choice  of  pictures,  and  so  on.  The  school 
tidiness,  which  often  consists  in  putting  away  ugly  books 
and  papers  in  ugly  desks  in  an  ugly  room,  is  but  gloomy 
and  ineffective  training  for  anyone.  If,  however,  the  class 
has  some  voice  in  the  selection  of  pictures  out  of  the 
school  stock,  and  in  their  position  on  the  walls,  and  is 
allowed  to  share  in  the  choice  of  distemper  or  paint 
whenever  opportunity  offers,  there  is  likely  to  be  some 


76        BEARINGS    OF    MODERN    PSYCHOLOGY 

pride  taken  in  the  room  and  some  pleasure  felt  in  keeping 
it  tidy.  In  one  school,  for  example,  it  was  found  possible 
to  use  white  paint  throughout  for  the  woodwork  because 
the  children's  pride  in  its  appearance  was  sufficient  to 
make  them  avoid  rubbing  against  it  or  marking  it. 

The  sentiment  of  kindness  to  animals  again  needs  to 
be  connected  with  the  training  in  habits  of  consideration 
and  care  of  animals.  Nature  study,  with  its  handling  of 
all  sorts  of  creatures  and  its  investigation  of  their  life, 
does  much  in  this  direction,  and  the  care  of  school  and 
home  pets  does  even  more.  Here,  too,  it  is  the  attitude 
of  mind  that  is  needed,  and  that  must  be  developed  and 
strengthened  by  actual  opportunities  of  expressing  the 
protective  and  other  suitable  instincts. 

Habits  which  depend  on  special  stimuli  may,  as  we  have 
pointed  out,  be  lost  completely  after  the  child  leaves 
school  and  m^y  even  be  deliberately  unlearnt  if  the 
atmosphere  in  which  they  were  formed  was  uncongenial, 
but  sentiments  when  once  acquired  are  harder  to  efface. 
Many  of  us,  indeed,  retain  certain  sentiments  which  we 
acquired  in  childhood  and  at  which  we  are  now  mildly 
amused  even  while  we  acknowledge  their  influence. 

In  the  natural  course  of  development  sentiments  will 
grow  up  first  in  relation  to  individuals.  Later  they  may 
be  extended  to  include  a  class  or  group,  as  some  children, 
for  instance,  pass  from  an  interest  in  their  baby  brother 
to  a  sentiment  of  love  towards  babies  in  general.  Finally, 
we  may  form  sentiments  towards  abstract  ideas  and  be- 
come lovers  of  humanity,  or  haters  of  oppression  and 
injustice.     It  is  evident  that  most  children's  sentiments 


GROWTH  OF  HABITS  AND  SENTIMENTS      77 

will  be  of  the  first  class,  and  this  fact  is  important  in 
determining  what  special  activities  are  likely  best  to 
develop  any  desired  sentiment.  A  child  who  willingly 
shared  his  tea  with  a  young  crossing-sweeper  would 
probably  have  advanced  much  further  towards  the 
sentiment  of  fellow-feeling  and  sympathy  with  those 
poorer  than  himself  than  if  he  had  sent  whole  boxfuls 
of  old  toys  to  Dr.  Barnado's  Homes  or  the  Waifs  and 
Strays.  And  this  not  because  the  sacrifice  in  the  second 
case  is  not  a  real  one  for  many  children  but  because  they 
cannot  realise  the  result  of  their  action  clearly  enough. 
It  is  unfortunate  that  hygienic  reasons  often  stand  in 
the  way  of  the  more  concrete  acts  of  kindness,  but  some 
of  these  may  be  possible  without  of  course  neglecting  to 
send  away  the  toys  too. 

With  the  approach  of  adolescence  there  comes  the  pos- 
sibility of  forming  abstract  sentiments,  but  the  con- 
sideration of  these  may  be  deferred  to  a  later  chapter. 


CHAPTER  V 
ENVIRONMENT  AND   SUGGESTION 

For  the  purposes  of  this  chapter  it  will  be  convenient 
to  use  the  word  environment  to  denote  all  the  external 
circumstances  that  surround  and  influence  the  child, 
whether  at  home  or  in  school,  but  not  any  direct  teaching 
or  instruction  he  may  receive.  In  the  widest  sense  of 
course  the  word  would  include  such  direct  teaching.  It 
will  also  be  convenient  to  distinguish  suggestions  con- 
veyed by  the  environment  from  those  conveyed  by  the 
teacher. 

Modern  theory  has  no  claim  to  have  discovered  the 
importance  of  environment  and  many  valuable  sugges- 
tions on  the  subject  are  to  be  found  in  the  earlier  educa- 
tional writers.  But  it  has  nevertheless  been  neglected 
in  schools  and  particularly  in  the  primary  schools,  a  fact 
explained  in  large  measure  by  the  history  of  these  schools 
and  by  their  eagerness  to  provide  much-needed  instruc- 
tion. Now,  however,  that  we  have  recovered  from  our 
just  amazement  and  deUght  that  nearly  every  child  in 
the  country  should  have  an  opportunity  of  learning 
reading  and  writing,  we  are  beginning  to  recognise  the 
importance  of  providing  a  suitable  environment  as  an 

78 


ENVIRONMENT   AND   SUGGESTION  79 

assistance  to  learning  these  and  other  things.  Evidently, 
too,  the  influence  of  environment  must  be  relied  upon 
to  a  greater  extent  under  modern  theories  of  education 
than  when  schools  were  places  where  the  child's  chief 
duty  w^as  to  "  mind  his  book."  At  present,  it  is  true,  we 
have  no  adequate  knowledge  of  what  is  due  to  environ- 
ment and  training  and  what  to  inheritance.  But  even 
granting  that  the  child's  chief  bent  and  tendencies  are 
determined  at  birth  by  the  differing  strength  of  his 
instincts,  by  his  temperament,  and  so  on,  it  yet  remains 
for  the  environment,  aided  by  the  suggestions  and  teach- 
ing of  elders  and  contemporaries,  to  provide  outlet  for 
these  tendencies.  The  natural  strength  of  a  tendency 
may  determine  whether  or  no  it  develop  under  adverse 
circumstances.  Geniyis  is  popularly  supposed  to  show 
itself  under  the  most  unfavourable  conditions,  but  talent 
at  least  may  be  lost  or  damped  by  the  absence  of  sympathy 
or  the  pressure  of  counter-suggestion.  Even  on  this  view- 
then,  where  much  is  supposed  due  to  inheritance,  environ- 
ment yet  plays  an  important  part.  If  it  cannot  produce 
a  tendency  it  can  stimulate,  strengthen,  and  direct  it. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  may  be  that  environment  is 
even  more  powerful.  Many  native  tendencies  (so  called) 
may  really  owe  their  development  to  suggestions  and 
opportunities  which  have  guided  instinctive  impulses 
common  to  all  normal  children  into  these  particular 
forms.  The  '  imaginative  '  child  may  ow^e  his  facility  in 
make-believe  games  to  an  illness  which  prevented  him 
from  taking  part  in  the  constructive  and  inventive  pur- 
suits which  seem  to  fascinate  his  brother,  and  threw  him 


8o        BEARINGS   OF  MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

back  to  quiet  games  with  dolls  and  tea-sets.  This  brother, 
too,  may  owe  his  keen  interest  in  '  making '  things  not  so 
much  to  the  special  vigour  of  his  constructive  instinct  as 
to  the  fact  that  bricks  and  sand  were  his  most  readily 
accessible  toys  in  early  childhood  and  that  his  parents 
were  genuinely  interested  in  his  constructions,  whereas 
they  felt,  half  unconsciously,  that  the  imaginative  games 
were  '  silly.'  The  difficulty  is  to  collect  enough  sufficiently 
careful  observations  and  records  of  the  origin  and  sub- 
sequent history  of  children's  favourite  games  and  occu- 
pations. Once  even  a  slight  interest  is  formed  in  any  one 
direction  the  law  of  habit  will,  as  we  have  seen,  tend 
to  increase  it  and  make  it  permanent.  Moreover,  rela- 
tives and  friends  naturally  encourage  such  developing 
tastes  provided  that  they  are  harmless. 

More  evidence  is  essential  before  either  of  these  views 
can  be  definitely  accepted,  but  in  either  case  the  in- 
fluence of  environment  is  considerable  and  is  well  worth 
the  teacher's  consideration.  It  must  consequently  be 
part  of  the  educator's  business  to  study  the  child's 
environment  critically  and  try  to  devise  means  of  im- 
proving it  where  necessary. 

This  point  may  be  illustrated  by  examining  the  oppor- 
tunities afforded  to  a  child's  instinctive  impulses  in 
homes  of  different  types.  Take  first  a  middle-class  house- 
hold, fairly  well-to-do  but  where  no  servant  is  kept. 
The  father  is  at  business  all  day  and  the  child  spends 
most  of  its  time  with  its  mother  and  shares  her  house- 
hold interests  and  activities,  which  it  afterwards  imitates 
in  its  play.    There  is  a  small  garden  where  both  parents 


ENVIRONMENT   AND   SUGGESTION  8i 

work  and  where  there  is  a  chicken- run.  Here,  too,  the 
child  '  helps '  and  repeats  the  activities  observed,  in  play 
or  in  its  own  little  plot  of  ground.  Such  an  environment 
provides  a  suitable  outlet  for  many  of  the  activities  of  a 
young  child.  Household  matters,  the  garden,  and  the 
chickens  stimulate  its  curiosity  and  it  has  numerous 
models  for  imitative  play  of  an  intelligent  kind.  A 
sand-pit  and  bricks  for  building,  and  chalks  for  drawing, 
are  easily  provided  in  addition.  The  weak  point  is  likely 
to  be  in  respect  to  music  and  dancing  and  possibly  in  the 
supply  of  suitable  picture-books  and  stories  by  which 
wider  and  less  personal  interests  may  be  aroused. 

Schools  for  young  children  should  be  able  to  provide 
an  environment  of  something  of  this  nature  without 
difficulty.  The  household  duties  may  lose  some  reality 
and  become  for  the  most  part  games  with  a  doll's  house. 
But  better  facilities  for  keeping  pets,  for  an  aquarium, 
and  for  more  varied  constructive  work  will  partly  com- 
pensate. Obviously  music,  games,  and  dancing  can  be 
much  better  provided  for  than  in  any  but  an  exceptional 
home. 

In  another  home  of  similar  social  standing  we  may 
find  that  the  parents  have  few  or  no  interests  which  will 
usefully  stimulate  the  instinctive  tendencies  of  their 
children.  The  mother  perhaps  hurries  over  her  house- 
hold work  and  discourages  the  child  from  helping  her  ; 
the  garden  is  neglected,  and  there  are  no  chickens  or 
pets.  The  child's  curiosity  is  chiefly  stimulated  by 
hearing  '  gossip  '  about  his  neighbours.  The  parents  do 
not  understand  his  need  to  make  and  do  things,  and  he 

M.P. — 6 


82        BEARINGS   OF  MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

probably  satisfies  this  by  messing  about  with  the  water- 
taps  or  other  people's  belongings  whenever  he  gets  the 
chance.  In  this  way  he  often  does  damage  and  grows 
accustomed  to  being  scolded  as  a  sequence  to  his  most 
interesting  games.  A  child  under  these  conditions 
develops  little  intelligent  interest  in  his  surroundings, 
and  is  lucky  if  he  acquires  nothing  worse  than  a  love  of 
mischief  and  a  certain  hardihood  in  braving  punishment. 
Analogous  mistakes  are  sometimes  made  even  in  schools 
for  young  children,  where,  as  we  have  said,  the  provision 
of  a  suitable  environment  should  be  comparatively  easy. 
As  children  get  older  more  is  demanded  of  their  en- 
vironment. For  one  thing  their  constructive  tendencies 
should  become  more  definite  and  the  sand-pit  and  brick- 
box  are  no  longer  adequate.  Tools  and  material  for  wood- 
work are  perhaps  required  or  help  in  making  dolls'  clothes 
or  in  drawing  a  map  of  the  neighbourhood.  Then  again 
the  child's  curiosity  should  take  in  ever-widening  fields 
as  well  as  deepen  along  the  lines  of  his  dominant 
interests,  and  should  be  satisfied  both  by  personal  in- 
vestigation whenever  possible,  and  by  reference  to  books. 
The  difficulty  is  that  his  interests  are  becoming  more 
specific  and  he  needs  specific  material,  whereas  in  earlier 
childhood  a  few  adaptable  toys  satisfied  his  indefinite 
requirements.  Some  homes  can  still  provide  much  of 
what  is  needed  at  this  stage,  but  many  fail  because  the 
interests  they  encourage  are  too  one-sided.  What  the 
child  seems  to  need  now  is  not  necessarily  much  direct 
teaching,  but  rather  endless  opportunities  to  '  do  '  things, 
combined  with  material  to  enable  him  to  '  find  out ' 


ENVIRONMENT  AND   SUGGESTION  83 

what  he  wants  to  know.  Books  to  look  at  and  someone 
who  knows  enough  and  is  sympathetic  enough  to  help 
him  and  tell  him  stories  will  provide  stimulus  in  respect 
to  literature,  history,  and  geography.  And  walks, 
whether  in  town  or  country,  with  opportunities  for  dis- 
cussion, investigation  and  questions,  will  help  to  interest 
in  Nature  Study  and  the  elements  of  science.  Similarly 
the  environment  should  provide  some  stimulus  and  outlet 
in  the  various  other  directions  into  which  we  wish  to 
guide  the  child's  interests. 

Unfortunately  school  environment  is  apt  to  fail  com- 
pletely after  the  infant  school  or  Kindergarten  is  passed. 
We  have  already  criticised  the  neglect  to  stimulate  and 
use  the  social  instincts.  But  apart  from  this  the  school 
tends  to  rely  too  much  on  the  direct  efforts  of  the  teacher 
instead  of  preparing  the  way  by  suggestive  surroundings 
which  give  opportunities  for  development  but  still  leave 
room  for  freedom  of  choice  and  individual  initiative. 
The  teacher  is  thus  handicapped  by  the  unstimulating 
character  of  the  school  environment.  He  has  to  begin 
his  subjects  as  it  were  from  the  beginning  and  laboriously 
build  up  an  interest,  whereas  under  more  natural  con- 
ditions the  children  would  have  a  hundred  developing 
interests  ready  to  his  hand,  and  the  only  difficulty  would 
be  which  to  choose  for  his  particular  purpose.  We  have 
already  described  one  of  the  ways  in  which  a  child  may 
travel  naturally  from  an  interest  in  building  and  the 
arrangement  of  houses,  to  the  making  of  maps  and  the 
arrangement  of  countries  and  geographical  features  and 
thence  to  a  wider  interest  in  geography.    Other  children 


84        BEARINGS   OF   MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

will  approach  the  subject  in  other  ways.  One  child,  for 
example,  was  inspired  with  keen  interest  in  the  map  of 
Great  Britain  through  an  interest  in  motor-cars  and  their 
letters.  Various  methods  of  approach  readily  suggest 
themselves,  and  the  child's  environment  may  be  pre- 
pared accordingly.  Introspection  and  observation  will 
suggest  similar  natural  approaches  to  other  school  '  sub- 
jects,' and  attention  to  these  preliminaries  will  repay 
the  teacher  both  by  an  increased  initiative  and  energy 
on  the  part  of  his  pupils  and  also  by  their  ready  grasp  of 
fresh  ideas. 

We  can  here  only  point  out  a  few  of  the  ways  in  which 
school  environment  might  be  improved.  Many  evils 
are  attributed  to  large  classes  in  primary  and  in  some 
secondary  schools,  but  what  is  perhaps  even  more  desir- 
able than  a  great  reduction  in  the  size  of  the  classes  is 
that  each  class  should  have  two  rooms  at  its  disposal,  the 
one  for  quiet  work,  reading  and  writing  and  most  of  the 
actual  teaching,  and  the  other  for  handwork  and  con- 
structive work  of  all  kinds,  and  possibly  for  science.  In 
this  latter  room  bits  of  work  could  be  left  unfinished 
without  being  in  the  way,  some  noise  would  be  allowable 
and  free  time  could  be  pleasurably  and  intelligently 
occupied.  Such  a  plan  would  make  it  easier  to  encourage 
group  work  and  independent  work  of  various  kinds,  the 
need  for  which  we  have  already  discussed.  Then  books 
of  reference  and  books  and  pictures  likely  to  interest 
children  of  various  developing  tastes  should  be  readily 
accessible  to  be  looked  at  in  spare  moments  or  in  pursuit 
of  some  special  interest.    Children  in  bookish  homes  po 


ENVIRONMENT   AND    SUGGESTION  85 

doubt  often  learn  to  spend  too  much  time  in  reading 
because  they  perhaps  lack  stimulus  for  their  more  active 
impulses.  But  at  any  rate  they  readily  acquire  a  habit 
of  referring  to  books  for  information  ;  yet  teachers  often 
fail  to  cultivate  this  habit  in  their  pupils  in  school  in 
spite  of  much  expenditure  of  time  and  energy.  In  a 
case  like  this  while  something  may  be  attributed  to 
inherited  taste  yet  the  difference  in  effort  and  result  must 
be  largely  due  to  the  total  lack  of  stimulus  in  the  school 
environment  which  throws  the  entire  burden  upon  the 
teacher's  direct  efforts. 

In  some  cases  no  doubt,  and  this  especially  in  the 
primary  schools,  expense  is  a  serious  consideration,  but 
even  here  something  might  be  done  if  we  could  forgo 
such  demands  as  that,  for  instance,  every  child  in  a  class 
should  be  provided  with  a  copy  of  the  reading  book  so 
that  fifty  children  may  follow  in  their  book  while  the 
fifty-first  reads  aloud. 

Environment  in  the  sense  in  which  we  have  used  it  is, 
however,  not  the  whole  of  the  matter.  Direct  teaching 
and  suggestion  are  also  needed.  With  the  former  we 
are  not  concerned  here,  but  the  word  suggestion  occupies 
a  prominent  place  in  some  recent  educational  writings, 
and  the  idea  embodied  in  it  is  sufficiently  important  to 
deserve  further  discussion. 

Suggestion,  imitation,  and  sympathy  have  been  called 
pseudo  instincts  because  the  tendencies  denoted,  although 
they  appear  to  be  innate,  are  not  accompanied  by  any 
specific  emotion  such  as  we  find  in  the  case  of  instincts 
proper  like  fear  or  anger.     The  three  terms  are  used 


86        BEARINGS   OF  MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

variously  even  by  psychologists,  and  the  lines  of  distinc- 
tion between  the  three  are  difficult  to  draw  in  practice. 
Roughly,  however,  they  may  be  taken  to  denote  those 
tendencies  in  human  beings  which  incline  them  respec- 
tively to  take  over  thoughts  and  beliefs  from  their  fellows, 
to  copy  their  acts,  and  to  feel  what  they  appear  to  feel, — 
without  any  deliberate  purpose  and  without  any  reasoned 
process  of  thought.  Illustrations  of  these  tendencies 
may  readily  be  supplied.  Children  acquire  accent, 
gesture,  and  manners  from  an  imitation,  which  is  mainly 
unconscious,  of  those  with  whom  they  live.  They  also 
readily  adopt  the  beliefs  of  their  elders  through  sugges- 
tion, accepting  them  with  an  absence  of  criticism  which 
justifies  the  phrase  a  "  child-like  faith."  Similarly 
children  readily  develop  '  sympathetic  '  fear  if  the  person 
with  whom  they  are  shows  signs  of  fright,  although  they 
may  not  know  the  cause.  If  the  cause  is  known  the  case 
becomes  one  of  suggestion  and  the  child  will  adopt  the 
suggested  belief,  say,  that  "all  cows  are  dangerous "  and 
may  hold  to  it  tenaciously  in  spite  of  much  evidence  to 
the  contrary.  It  may  be  added  that  many  specific  fears 
often  explained  as  '  instinctive '  are  in  fact  probably 
acquired  in  childhood  through  suggestion  and  sympathy. 
Such  are  possibly  fear  of  the  dark,  fear  of  touching 
creatures  like  worms  and  slugs,  and  almost  certainly  fear 
of  animals,  particularly  of  cows  and  dogs.  Childhood 
might  be  a  much  happier  period  if  people  could  refrain 
from  inadvertent  suggestion  of  danger  and  could  also 
deny  themselves  the  pleasure  of  witnessing  the  thrill 
caused  by  exciting  stories  of  wild  animals,  hunting,  rescue 


ENVIRONMENT   AND   SUGGESTION  87 

from  fire  and  so  on.  The  small  child  often  delights  in 
such  stories  at  the  time,  but  they  leave  him  the  victim 
of  untold  horrors  when  he  is  left  alone,  and  especially  at 
night.  Older  children,  who  can  better  estimate  the 
probability  of  danger,  can  enjoy  stories  of  this  kind  with- 
out so  much  risk  that  the  suggestions  conveyed  will  cause 
them  subsequent  misery. 

We  are  here  concerned  primarily  with  suggestion, 
using  the  word  to  denote  the  process  by  which  an  idea 
or  proposition  is  conveyed  from  one  person  to  another 
and  is  accepted  without  adequate  logical  grounds.  We 
shall  not  attempt,  however,  to  mark  off  the  numerous 
cases  where  imitation  and  sympathy  are  also  present. 

The  suggested  idea  may  be  conveyed  by  words,  ges- 
tures or  looks,  but  the  essential  characteristic  is  that  no 
attempt  is  made  to  offer  a  reason  for  believing  it  and 
that  the  recipient  accepts  it  in  the  same  spirit.  The 
success  of  the  process  depends  :  (i)  on  the  skill  of  pre- 
sentation ;  (2)  on  the  prestige  and  authority  of  the  sug- 
gestor  ;  (3)  on  the  state  of  mind  of  the  recipient.  Know- 
ledge of  the  subject  concerning  which  the  suggestion  is 
made  must  generally  be  absent  or  at  any  rate  not  readily 
called  to  mind,  otherwise  a  process  of  reasoning  is  likely 
to  be  set  up.  Contrariant  ideas  too  must  be  absent,  or 
not  sufficiently  powerful  to  offer  serious  opposition  to 
the  suggested  idea,  otherwise  it  will  either  be  rejected 
forthwith  or  the  opposition  may  lead  to  a  reasoned 
examination  of  the  matter  and  to  a  more  or  less  logical 
acceptance  of  one  or  the  other. 

These  conditions  make  it  obvious  that  children,  as  a 


88        BEARINGS   OF   MODERN    PSYCHOLOGY 

rule  are  specially  suggestible.  They  accept  suggested 
ideas  without  serious  opposition  and  often  regard  them, 
subsequently  as  their  own.  They  also  hold  to  them  with 
a  tenacity  which  they  cannot  justify  and  with  an  emo- 
tional tinge  which  is  often  effective  in  leading  to  action. 
These  actions  must  be  distinguished  from  those  due  to 
direct  command,  on  the  one  hand,  and  from  those  due 
to  reason  on  the  other.  With  regard  to  the  latter  it 
should  be  noted  that  a  child  often  thinks  and  acts 
reasonably  although  his  conclusions  are  incorrect  owing 
to  inadequate  knowledge  and  to  his  inexperience,  which 
leads  him  to  overlook  the  probable  existence  of  unknown 
factors. 

In  spite  of  their  normal  suggestibility,  however, 
children,  like  most  adults,  display  at  times  a  tendency  to 
contra-suggestibility,  that  is,  a  tendency  to  accept  without 
reasonable  grounds  the  opposite  of  any  idea  suggested 
to  them.  This  may  be  due  to  an  unusual  amount  of 
self-assertion,  or  in  some  cases  to  a  kind  of  nervous 
irritability,  probably  due  to  physical  causes,  and  which 
makes  them  equally  inclined  to  resist  commands  or 
requests.  Even  in  such  cases  both  children  and  adults 
often  accept  the  suggested  idea  ultimately  though  not  at 
the  moment  when  it  is  presented.  It  is  also  possible  to 
make  the  suggestion  with  sufficient  skill  to  avoid  rousing 
the  tendency  to  opposition. 

The  important  effects  of  suggestion  in  school  can 
hardly  be  overlooked.  For  one  thing  much  of  the  so- 
called  tone  of  the  school  will  on  analysis  be  found  to 
arise  from  suggestions  conveyed  with  all  the  prestige  of 


ENVIRONMENT   AND   SUGGESTION  89 

the  elder  and  more  prominent  boys  to  the  others.  Good 
or  bad  tone  sometimes  spreads  in  this  way  from  a  specially 
influential  group  of  boys  until  the  effects  are  felt  through- 
out the  school.  An  extension  of  the  process  of  suggestion 
is  found  in  the  prefect  system  as  it  is  carried  out,  for 
instance,  in  many  large  boarding  schools.  The  system 
works  most  effectively  when  the  prefects  are  on  friendly 
terms  with  the  head  master  (or  mistress)  whom  at  the 
same  time  they  respect,  so  that  he  can  readily  convey 
suggestions  to  them  concerning  government  and  be- 
haviour. The  prefects  in  their  turn  must  be  themselves 
admired  and  liked  by  the  majority  of  the  other  boys,  or 
their  prestige  will  be  insufficient  to  make  suggestion  work 
smoothly  and  unconsciously,  and  friction  is  likely  to 
result  from  their  attempts  to  enforce  their  wishes. 

Suggestion  too  is  the  basis  not  only  of  the  tone  of  the 
school  so  far  as  discipline  is  concerned,  but  also  of  the 
attitude  of  the  boys  towards  work  and  games,  of  their 
interest  in  certain  subjects,  and  their  dislike  for  others, 
and  of  a  hundred  other  matters  which  affect  the  general 
efficiency  of  the  school.  Some  of  these  suggestions  come 
from  the  masters,  others  from  the  boys  themselves,  but 
in  all  cases  the  process  is  an  unreasoning  one,  and  the  boy 
who  holds  a  reasoned  opinion  on  any  of  the  subjects  in 
question  is  the  exception. 

Now  all  this  is  in  many  respects  good,  and  much  of 
it  is  probably  inevitable,  but  the  process  has  obvious 
dangers,  and  these  are  apt  to  be  greatest  where  suggestion 
seems  most  effective.  And  first  the  suggestion  may  be 
no  suggestion  at  all  but  in  reality  a  command,  and  the 


90        BEARINGS   OF   MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

form  of  words  may  blind,  the  teacher,  and  occasionally 
the  onlooker,  though  usually  not  the  child,  to  this  fact. 
This  is  apt  to  happen  in  schools  for  young  children  where 
the  influence  of  the  teacher  is  great,  and  often  indeed 
quite  justifiably  so.  Suggestive  questions  as  to  occupa- 
tions, "  Would  you  not  like  to  do  this  ?  "  "  Would  you 
not  like  to  make  so-and-so  to  illustrate  the  story  ?  "  are 
naturally  followed  by  a  poUte  chorus  of  "  Yes."  But  no 
child  in  the  class  has  regarded  the  question  as  conveying 
anything  but  an  order.  Indeed  the  teacher  herself  has 
no  alternative  in  view,  because  she  is  so  used  to  her 
pupils'  ready  assent.  In  one  such  case  where  the  children, 
less  docile  than  usual,  answered  "  No,"  the  teacher  feebly 
replied,  "  Oh,  but  I  think  we  had  better  do  it." 

Even  when  this  particular  mistake  is  avoided  the  use 
of  suggestion  to  stimulate  interest  and  to  lead  the  child 
into  special  activities  may  easily  be  excessive.  On  the 
surface  the  results  are  often  excellent,  the  child  is  un- 
conscious or  barely  conscious  of  control  and  he  takes  a 
keen  interest  in  his  lessons.  The  final  effect,  however,  is 
to  make  him  over-dependent  on  the  teacher  and  unused 
to  exercising  his  own  judgment.  He  responds  readily  to 
the  teacher's  suggestion  but  is  allowed  no  time  to  think 
out  things  and  still  less  to  react  on  his  own  initiative  to 
the  stimuli  which  should  be  present  in  every  school 
environment.  Still  worse  results  sometimes  occur  when 
the  teacher  wishes  to  make  the  child  think  and  reason. 
Thought  by  its  very  nature  must  work  independently, 
and  in  children  and  even  in  adults  the  process  is  a  slow 
one.     Yet  quite  difficult  reasoning  processes  are  some- 


ENVIRONMENT   AND   SUGGESTION  91 

times  demanded  of  a  class  of  children  in  the  short  space 
of  a  single  lesson.  It  is  small  wonder  that  the  eager 
teacher  tries  to  hasten  the  process  by  subtle  suggestion 
conveyed  in  questions,  or  by  direction  of  observation,  or 
merely  by  gesture.  Thus  he  deceives  himself  into  sup- 
posing that  the  pupils  are  really  thinking  and  even  in- 
venting. In  reahty  the  children  are  at  best  only  following 
another's  thoughts,  and  the  more  '  skilful '  the  teaching 
the  more  dependent  do  they  become.  The  conclusion 
reached  finally  is  that  at  which  the  teacher  aimed  and 
gives  a  correct  solution  of  a  problem  only  half  under- 
stood by  the  class.  Throughout  such  teaching  the  child's 
interest  is  mainly  or  wholly  due  to  the  teacher's  influence. 
He  will  not  occupy  himself  with  the  subject  out  of  school, 
and  he  will  not  be  able  to  work  out  similar  bits  of  reason- 
ing by  himself.  Such  over-suggestive  lessons  must  be 
condemned  as  encouraging  directly  a  slipshod  tendency 
to  accept  other  people's  reasoning  which  will  later  m^ke 
the  man  an  easy  prey  for  the  politician  and  the  despair 
of  the  statesman. 

Legitimate  suggestion  is  easily  recognised  by  its 
results ;  it  takes  hold  of  the  child,  as  it  were,  and  leads 
him  without  further  attention  from  his  teacher  to  follow 
out  the  subject  for  himself,  and  he  will  show  by  his  activities 
and  by  his  questions  that  he  is  following  it  out.  And  this 
result  is  due  not  to  any  magic  skill  in  the  way  the  idea  is 
presented  to  the  child,  nor  to  the  prestige  of  the  suggestor, 
but  to  the  mere  fact  that  the  suggestion  stimulates 
instinctive  tendencies  or  previously  developed  interests. 
Anyone  who  has  had  to  do  with  children  at  home  knovvs 


92        BEARINGS   OF  MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

the  difference  between  the  suggestion  which  takes  hold 
and  keeps  hold  and  the  one  which  attracts  for  the  moment 
or  so  long  as  the  suggestor  is  present,  but  ultimately 
falls  flat.  Unfortunately  in  school  the  teacher's  sugges- 
tions are  too  seldom  allowed  to  fall  flat,  rather  they  are 
artificially  kept  alive  by  further  stimulus. 

Something  of  this  no  doubt  is  due  to  bad  conditions 
of  teaching.  The  teacher  too  often  works  under  con- 
ditions devised  to  suit  the  educational  methods  of  fifty 
or  a  hundred  j-ears  ago,  whilst  his  own  views  of  good 
method  have  completely  changed.  He  works  in  class- 
rooms and  with  equipment  suited  only  to  demonstration 
and  lecture  lessons,  while  he  aims  at  individual  treatment. 
He  often  achieves  much,  but  it  is  no  wonder  if  sometimes 
his  criteria  of  good  teaching  grow  confused.  Interest 
during  the  lesson  and  order  maintained  without  friction 
are  good  in  themselves,  but  they  may  nevertheless  be 
arrived  at  by  teaching  that  is  definitely  bad,  and  that 
will  leave  the  child  lacking  in  power  to  interest  himself 
outside  school  and  dependent  on  others  to  stimulate  and 
guide  his  thoughts. 

Finally  it  is  the  educator's  ambition  to  encourage 
reason  and  independent  thought,  yet  in  spite  of  this 
the  majority  of  children  leave  school  with  a  mass  of 
ideas  on  politics,  art,  morals,  and  religion,  which  they 
have  acquired  by  various  processes  of  suggestion,  about 
which  they  have  never  been  expected  to  reason  seriously, 
and  criticism  of  which  has  been  checked  at  the  outset. 
We  should  laugh  at  a  teacher  who  conveyed  to  his  pupil 
by  suggestion   a   belief   in   geometrical   theorems  or  in 


ENVIRONMENT   AND    SUGGESTION  93 

Boyle's  law.  The  very  fact  that  differences  of  opinion 
are  frequent  in  relation,  say,  to  art  and  infrequent  in 
relation  to  elementary  mathematics  and  science  should 
make  us  beware  of  dogmatism  :  yet  it  has  an  exactly 
opposite  result.  We  are  afraid  to  let  the  child  strengthen 
and  test  the  foundations  of  his  behefs  in  those  very  sub- 
jects where  he  is  most  likely  to  meet  with  opposition 
and  contradiction  in  later  Ufe.  Thus  the  boy  or  girl 
goes  out  into  life  with  no  notion  of  how  to  form  an 
intelligent  opinion  on  any  of  these  subjects  and  even 
with  no  notion  that  his  own  opinions  are  not  based  upon 
reason.  Then  he  finds  that  opposed  beliefs  are  held 
equally  tenaciously  by  companions  whom  he  respects. 
And  if  this  happens  during  adolescence  when  reason- 
ing powers  and  critical  tendencies,  and  often  an  un- 
reasoned opposition  to  early  tradition  are  strong,  a  tragic 
day  of  reckoning  may  come.  The  more  effectively  the 
beliefs  were  inspired  by  early  suggestion  the  more  he 
will  suffer  in  casting  them  off  or  modifying  them,  and  the 
less  unprejudiced  he  is  likely  to  be  in  the  process.  Not 
infrequently  the  final  result  is  a  tenacious  acceptance 
with  equally  little  reason  of  opinions  diametrically  op- 
posed to  those  his  teachers  have  so  carefully  inculcated. 

It  is  certainly  a  poor  tribute  to  our  own  behefs  if  we 
dare  not  present  them  except  by  blind  suggestion.  And 
if  we  justify  ourselves  by  the  reflection  that  the  child's 
reasoning  powers  are  so  limited  that  his  conclusions,  if 
he  is  encouraged  to  independent  thought,  must  gener- 
ally be  false,  we  should  remember  that  such  false  con- 
clusions can  be  readily  corrected  as  he  grows  older  and 


94        BEARINGS   OF   MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

learns  to  reason  better.  The  habit  of  accepting 
other  people's  opinions  uncritically  is  easily  learnt 
and  hard  to  break,  whereas  independent  thought  will 
always  be  sufficiently  repugnant  to  a  social  creature 
like  man. 


Part    II 

CHAPTER  VI 

EXPERIMENT   IN   EDUCATION 

Experimental  psychology  is  a  comparatively  recent 
development  of  psychological  science  and  as  such  has 
been  subjected  to  severe  criticism,  but  the  results  already 
attained  are  fully  able  to  justify  it.  Some  of  these 
results,  such  as  those  connected  with  memory  and 
association,  are  of  direct  importance  in  educational  work 
-and  many  others  are  indirectly  suggestive,  so  that  it  is 
small  wonder  that  experimental  work  carried  out  with 
children  and  often  actually  in  the  schools  is  a  rapidly 
developing  method  of  investigation.  Experimental 
education  has,  in  fact,  become  so  important  of  late  years 
and  it  looms  so  large  in  the  eyes  of  the  public  that  it  is 
well  to  consider  the  exact  nature  of  its  claims  and  what 
may  reasonably  be  hoped  from  it. 

In  the  first  part  of  the  book  we  have  made  a  number 
of  general  statements  about  children,  their  instincts, 
their  development,  how  interests  grow  and  how  purpose 
and  control  grow.  These  generalisations  have  been 
arrived  at  by  psychologists  partly  by  study  of  adults, 

95 


96        BEARINGS    OF   MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

children,  and  animals ;  partly  by  introspection,  i.e. 
analysis  of  their  own  individual  consciousness ;  and  partly 
as,  for  instance,  in  the  case  of  animal  instincts,  by  experi- 
ment. These  and  other  similar  generalisations  constitute 
an  attempt  to  describe  and  partially  explain  the  common 
features  underlying  human  nature  as  such,  and  in  so  far 
as  they  are  correct,  they  enable  us  to  infer  how  individual 
children  are  likely  to  behave  under  certain  conditions — 
so  long,  that  is,  as  we  keep  to  broad  lines  and  expect 
details  to  be  determined  by  individual  peculiarities. 
And  it  is  this  knowledge  which  supplies  the  basis  of  our 
educational  theory.  Now  experimental  education  aims 
at  supplementing  and  extending,  or  it  may  be  correcting, 
the  broad  general  theory  by  investigations  with  groups 
of  children  or  with  individual  children,  under  certain 
carefully  prescribed  conditions,  and  by  testing  and  ex- 
tending the  results  of  these  investigations  by  the  aid  of 
the  mathematical  and  statistical  sciences. 

To  experiment  means  intentionally  to  alter  or  produce 
certain  conditions  in  which  the  thing  observed  functions, 
in  order  to  observe  its  procedure  after  the  change.  We 
often  use  the  word  in  this  broad  sense.  For  instance, 
we  say  that  a  small  child  '  experiments '  when,  after 
seeing  milk  given  to  the  cat,  he  offers  it  the  piece  of  grass 
with  which  he  was  pretending  to  feed  his  toy  horse. 
And  from  one  point  of  view  all  education  is  experimental, 
since  teachers  are  continually  altering  their  methods  and 
watching  the  effects  of  the  change  upon  different  children. 
The  teacher's  attitude,  however,  can  seldom  be  that  of 
the  scientific  experim.entalist.    He  works  with  a  definite 


EXPERIMENT   IN    EDUCATION  97 

practical  aim  in  view  ;  he  wants,  for  example,  to  interest 
an  inattentive  child,  and  he  tries  throughout  the  lesson 
various  ways  of  appeal  until  perhaps  at  last  he  succeeds 
and  attention  is  secured.  But  his  preoccupation  with  the 
practical  aim  leaves  him  little  time  to  note  data  which 
are  not  directly  concerned  with  the  result,  and  the  data 
he  does  gather  may  be  so  sketchy  that  he  cannot  explain 
exactly  how  that  result  was  arrived  at.  He  cannot  say 
positively  this  happened  under  such  and  such  conditions 
because  of  that  other  thing  which  I  did  or  made  the 
child  do.  He  cannot  even  say  whether  the  final  atten- 
tiveness  of  the  child  was  a  cumulative  result  due  to  the 
combined  effect  of  his  successive  appeals,  or  was  caused 
by  his  final  effort,  or  by  something  quite  different,  say, 
the  removal  of  some  distraction,  which  he  had  not  noticed 
at  all.  Still  less  can  he  say  that  a  similar  method  will  be 
effective  another  time  with  a  different  child  or  under 
different  circumstances.  No  doubt  a  teacher  with  wide 
experience  who  has  formed  a  habit  of  criticising  his 
methods  may  approximate  more  closely  to  scientific 
knowledge,  but  his  statements  must  remain  empirical, 
that  is,  he  knows  that  his  procedure  has  been  successful 
in  certain  cases  and  unsuccessful  in  others,  but  he  does 
not  know  enough  of  the  conditions  to  make  sure  how 
far  his  successful  methods  would  prove  generally  success- 
ful or  what  exact  causal  relation  has  been  involved. 

Scientific  experiment  demands  a  more  definite  pro- 
cedure if  we  are  to  arrive  at  knowledge  of  cause  and  effect 
in  the  particular  cases  examined  and  to  determine  the 
possibility  of    basing   trustworthy   generalisations   upon 

M.P. —  7 


98        BEARINGS   OF   MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

these  results.  We  may  now  consider  what  are  the 
characteristic  features  of  such  experimental  work  and 
how  far  these  are  present  in  experimental  education. 

I.  We  must  have  adequate  knowledge  of  all  conditions 
present  which  are  relevant  to  the  particular  point  we 
are  investigating.  This  is  best  secured  by  preparing  the 
conditions,  as  far  as  possible,  to  suit  our  special  purpose. 
And  to  do  this  we  must  be  able  to  recognise  and  guard 
against  probable  disturbing  factors.  Thus  if  we  wished 
to  find  out  by  experiment  whether  a  group  of  children 
are  more  tired  after  a  lesson  on  arithmetic  or  after  one 
on  gymnastics,  we  might  arrange  that  the  two  test  lessons 
should  be  given  at  the  same  time  of  day,  that  the  previous 
work  of  the  children  that  morning,  and  possibly  the  day 
before,  was  similar  on  each  occasion,  that  the  lessons 
were  of  equal  length  and  given  under  like  conditions  as 
regards  ventilation,  temperature  and  general  comfort. 
After  thus  ruling  out  certain  probable  causes  of  differ- 
ence apart  from  the  effects  of  the  subjects  themselves, 
we  should  be  more  justified  in  supposing  that  any  differ- 
ence of  fatigue  shown  by  the  fatigue  tests  given  after 
the  lessons  was  partly  or  wholly  due  to  the  difference  in 
subject.  Moreover  should  it  be  necessary  for  different 
teachers  to  take  the  two  lessons  we  should  have  to  devise 
means  for  checking  by  some  further  test  the  effects  of 
their  differing  personality  and  methods.  Or  we  might 
adopt  a  different  plan  and  test  the  children's  fatigue  both 
before  and  after  each  lesson,  measuring  the  increase  in 
each  case.  But  unless  the  initial  fatigue  was  approxi- 
mately the  same  in  each  case  this  would  obviously  be  a 


EXPERIMENT   IN   EDUCATION  99 

less  satisfactory  plan,  since  the  fatigue  effects  of  a  given 
subject  may  be  expected  to  vary  considerably  according 
to  the  children's  condition  at  the  beginning  of  the  lesson. 

Other  sources  of  error  will  probably  occur  to  the  reader, 
but  we  need  not  give  further  illustrations.  Clearly, 
however,  any  failure  in  the  preliminary  analysis  of  the 
possible  disturbing  factors,  or  in  care  in  preparing  the 
experiment  so  as  to  rule  out  or  check  the  effects  of  these 
may  lead  to  the  fallacy  of  inferring  that  a  merely  acci- 
dental or  irrelevant  factor  has  actually  produced  the  result 
observed.  Thus  in  the  above  example  we  might  con- 
ceivably ignore  the  fact  that  although  the  same  teacher 
took  both  lessons  yet  she  was  so  much  more  interested 
herself  in,  say,  arithmetic  than  in  gymnastics  that  her 
keenness  infected  her  pupils,  causing  them  to  work  much 
harder  in  the  former  lesson  and  to  be  proportionately 
more  fatigued.  In  this  case,  of  course,  the  excess  of 
fatigue  will  really  be  a  measure  of  the  teacher's  extra 
efficiency,  and  may  not  depend  at  all  upon  the  difference 
in  subject  as  such. 

A  little  reflection  wiU  show  that  completely  adequate 
knowledge  of  the  conditions  can  only  be  secured  in  the 
so-called  exact  sciences,  where  the  phenomena  studied 
can  be  isolated  in  the  laboratory  and  be  kept  free  from 
all  irrelevant  disturbing  factors.  Directly  experiments 
deal  with  living  beings  the  problem  inevitably  becomes 
more  complex,  and  the  more  developed  and  delicate  the 
organism  the  more  difficult  is  it  to  analyse  successfully 
all  the  conditions  which  may  affect  the  results.  There 
is  no  need  to  conclude  from  this,  however,  that  any 


100      BEARINGS   OF   MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

attempts  at  exact  results  are  necessarily  fruitless,  as  some 
writers  are  inclined  to  do.  But  the  difficulty  of  the 
problem  should  be  recognised.  Repetition  of  experi- 
ments, under  the  same  or  slightly  varied  conditions, 
the  testing  of  large  numbers  of  cases  in  order  to  cancel 
individual  peculiarities,  comparison  of  results  obtained 
by  different  experimenters  and  the  use  of  mathematical 
devices  for  calculating  and  checking  probable  errors,  all 
these  and  many  other  precautions  can  be  used  in  experi- 
mental education  according  to  the  nature  of  the  work. 
Above  all,  every  result  needs  to  be  severely  criticised  and 
checked  and  every  suggested  source  of  error  investigated, 
and  until  this  has  been  done  any  conclusions  inferred 
from  it  can  only  be  regarded  as  working  hypotheses, 
useful  enough  in  many  cases,  but  which  yet  require  further 
confirmation. 

Analogovis  difficulties  are  found  in  experimental  work 
in  such  a  science  as  biology,  but  in  one  respect  experi- 
mental psychology  is  peculiarly  complicated.  We  are 
here  not  concerned  only  with  external  factors  but  also 
with  the  mental  states  of  the  individual  himself,  and 
these  mental  states  can  only  be  partially  inferred  by  the 
experimenter  from  their  outward  expression  in  words  or 
gestures.  In  experiment  with  adults  introspective 
evidence  is  a  valuable  and  indeed  almost  an  indispensable 
aid,  but  children  are  necessarily  both  less  skilful  in  the 
process  of  introspection  and  less  able  to  describe  their 
experiences  accurately.  Difficulties  of  this  kind  can  be 
partially  overcome  in  practice  as  the  experimenter  grows 
more  experienced  and  learns  to  distinguish  the  cases  where 


EXPERIMENT   IN   EDUCATION  loi 

the  child's  introspection  is  Hkely  to  be  valuable.  But 
on  this  account,  amongst  others,  inexpert  and  amateur 
experiments  are  here  specially  unreliable. 

2.  We  need  sufficient  knowledge  of  the  material  upon 
which  the  experiment  is  made  to  know  whether  it  can 
fairly  be  taken  as  a  sample  or  as  typical  of  other  partially 
similar  material.  Here  again,  in  dealing  with  living 
matter  the  exact  similarity  found  in  the  physical  sciences 
is  unattainable.  Hence  the  use  of  the  words  sample 
or  type.  The  concept  of  sample  is  familiar  enough  in 
commerical  usage  to  require  no  special  explanation,  and 
we  use  both  it  and  '  typical '  in  medical  and  sociological 
generalisations,  as,  for  instance,  when  we  assert  that 
the  death-rate  in  a  slum  district  cannot  fairly  be  taken  as 
a  sample  of  the  death-rate  of  the  whole  town.  Or,  in 
other  words,  that  the  slum  district  is  not  typical  of  the 
town  as  a  whole,  though  it  may  possibly  be  typical  of 
slum  districts  in  a  number  of  other  towns. 

The  problem  of  determining  how  far,  and  in  what 
exact  respects,  any  group  of  children  may  be  taken  as  a 
fair  sample  of  other  groups  is  perhaps  one  of  the  most 
difficult  in  experimental  education.  Yet  obviously  the 
value  of  any  general  conclusion  that  we  seek  to  draw 
from  our  experiments  will  rest  upon  the  degree  of 
accuracy  with  which  this  problem  is  solved,  and  neglect 
to  realise  this  is  likely  to  be  a  fruitful  source  of  fallacy. 
In  the  present  state  of  our  knowledge,  for  example,  it  is 
not  too  much  to  say  that  the  results  of  experiments  with 
children  of  a  certain  social  standing  can  hardly  ever  be 
assumed   true  of  children   of   even   a   shghtly   different 


102      BEARINGS   OF   MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

standing,  or  of  children  of  similar  standing  but  different 
environment,  who  live,  say,  in  a  small  county  town, 
instead  of  in  a  city.  In  such  cases  if  a  general  result  is 
desired  the  experiments  must  be  repeated  under  the 
different  conditions  which  it  is  desired  to  include  in  the 
generalisation.  Exceptions  to  this  may  be  found  in  such 
cases  as  those  of  tests  made  in  reference  to  rote  memory, 
a  semi-mechanical  power  whose  functions  are  probably 
little  affected  by  experience.  In  tests  concerned  with 
logical  memory,  on  the  other  hand,  the  different  past 
experience  of  the  children  as  affected  by  their  different 
social  standing  would  clearly  be  a  relevant  factor, 

3.  Experiment  must  always  be  recognised  as  a  part 
only  of  general  educational  science.  We  sometimes 
speak  rather  misleadingly  of  the  '  experimental '  sciences, 
as  though  in  fact  any  science  could  depend  for  its  data 
entirely  upon  experimental  methods.  Some  sciences,  it 
is  true,  owing  to  the  nature  of  their  material,  can  use 
experiment  much  more  widely  and  effectively  than  others. 
But  in  all  cases  the  procedure  of  investigation  is  a  lengthy 
one,  experiments  only  form  one  link  in  the  chain,  and 
their  results,  until  they  are  connected  up  with  the  general 
body  of  knowledge  which  forms  the  science,  must  remain 
empirical  and  of  limited  value.  Roughly  speaking,  the 
procedure  is  somewhat  as  follows :  We  must  first  have 
preliminary  knowledge  obtained  from  observation,  or 
perhaps  from  earlier  experiments,  or  inferred  from  the 
general  laws  which  we  believe  to  apply  in  the  case  we 
are  considering.  This  knowledge  must  be  adequate  to 
enable  us  to  form  a  working  hypothesis  as  to  some  causal 


EXPERIMENT   IN   EDUCATION  103 

relation  which  we  wish  to  investigate.  Then  follows  a 
stage  of  careful  reasoning.  If  this  hypothesis  be  true 
certain  results  will  follow  in  such  and  such  cases.  Do 
they  follow  in  fact  ?  In  some  cases  the  hypothesis  can 
be  partially  or  even  wholly  tested  by  observation  without 
experiment,  or  at  least  without  any  but  the  simple  experi- 
ments in  teaching  to  which  we  referred  at  the  beginning 
of  the  chapter.  And  until  lately  educationalists  relied 
upon  such  tests  entirely.  But  evidently  in  many,  prob- 
ably in  most  cases,  the  difficulty  of  analysing  the  condi- 
tions present  was  too  complicated  to  allow  of  results 
being  obtained  with  much  degree  of  certainty,  and 
indeed  the  lack  of  agreement  in  educational  practice  is 
to  some  extent  a  witness  to  the  uncertainty  of  these 
results.  Moreover,  in  numerous  other  cases  no  adequate 
test  could  be  obtained  Avithout  devising  some  means  to 
rule  out  disturbing  factors  by  the  arrangement  of  special 
conditions,  which  could  not  be  secured  in  the  ordinary 
course  of  school  life.  Hence  the  importance  of  experi- 
ment. The  experimentalist  starting  from  his  working 
hypothesis  devises  conditions  which  will  test  its  truth, 
and  then  proceeds  to  reproduce  these  conditions  in 
actual  fact  and  examine  the  results.  In  this  way  he  can 
study  the  causal  relation  which  he  is  investigating  with 
a  minimum  of  disturbing  factors.  And  by  repetition  of 
the  experiment  in  varied  conditions  he  may  be  able  to 
rule  out  these  possibly  disturbing  factors  altogether,  or 
to  estimate  their  effects  with  practical  certainty.  Even 
when  this  has  been  done  the  hypothesis  needs  further 
testing  under  different  conditions.     Meanwhile,  should 


i04      BEARINGS   OF   MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

the  conclusions  provisionally  arrived  at  have  a  direct 
bearing  on  actual  school  method,  they  can  be  further 
tested  by  putting  the  new  method  into  practice  and 
determining  whether  its  effects  are  what  were  expected 
or  whether  there  are  variations  which  need  explanation. 
Further,  deductions  from  the  provisional  conclusions 
may  help  to  explain  facts  not  directly  connected  with 
the  experiments  hitherto  tried,  and  in  this  case  fresh 
experiments  will  probably  be  desirable  as  an  additional 
test. 

We  may  illustrate  this  procedure  by  reference  to  the 
teaching  of  reading.  The  old  method  of  teaching 
reading  by  learning  first  the  names  of  the  letters  and  then 
combining  them  into  words  of  two  and  three  letters, 
and  so  on,  was  obviously  the  result  of  a  consideration  of 
how  adults  spell  words  rather  than  how  they  read  them. 
A  closer  study  of  the  psychology  of  reading  led  to  a 
recognition  of  two  facts.  First,  that  adults  who  read 
fluently  do  not  analyse  the  words  into  letters  at  all,  and 
that  in  rapid  reading  the  sentence  or  phrase  is  the  unit 
rather  than  the  word.  Second,  that  as  letters  are  sounded 
in  certain  ways  quite  distinct  from  their  names,  and  the 
spelling  of  words  is  based  upon  these  sounds,  reading 
can  be  approached  more  intelligently  by  learning  the 
sounds  of  the  letters  rather  than  their  names,  and  build- 
ing up  the  words  from  these  sounds.  These  two  con- 
clusions led  each  to  a  new  method  of  teaching  reading, 
the  '  Look-and-Say  '  method  and  the  phonetic  method 
respectively.  The  phonetic  method  is  necessarily  com- 
plicated in  a  language  like  English,  where  only  a  proportion, 


EXPERIMENT   IN   EDUCATION  105 

though  a  fairly  large  proportion,  of  the  words  in  common 
use  are  spelled  phonetically,  and  where  some  of  the  letters 
represent  several  different  sounds.  Nevertheless,  its 
advocates  claimed  that  the  gain  in  intclhgence  was  more 
than  proportionate  to  the  loss  due  to  these  irregularities, 
and  various  devices  w-ere  introduced  w'hich  aimed  at 
lessening  the  difficulties.  Of  these  the  Dale  system  is  the 
best  known  and  the  most  carefully  worked  out. 

At  this  stage,  then,  we  have  two  opposed  groups  of 
theorists  each  asserting  that  their  method  was  the  best. 
The  only  test  of  these  claims  was  the  results  obtained  in 
the  different  schools  where  the  methods  were  used. 
From  these,  as  might  be  expected,  no  final  decision  could 
be  arrived  at.  Some  teachers  preferred  one  method, 
others  another  ;  many  used  a  combination  of  both. 
Moreover,  many  children  learnt  to  read  well  in  most  of 
the  schools  in  spite  of  the  variation  of  method,  as  indeed 
they  had  managed  to  do  even  under  the  old  alphabetic 
system.  Clearly,  then,  the  method  of  learning  to  read 
was  only  one  amongst  many  factors  which  influenced 
the  progress  of  the  children  and  experiment  was  the 
only  means  of  deciding  the  conflicting  claims  of  the 
different  methods.  Some  interesting  experimental  work 
has  already  been  done  In  connection  with  this  problem, 
and  possibly  a  decisive  conclusion  may  shortly  be  arrived 
at.  For  the  purposes  of  this  illustration,  however,  we  need 
only  point  out  some  of  the  conditions  necessary  in  order 
to  experiment  and  some  of  the  difficulties  that  arise. 

In  this  case  there  are  two  working  hypotheses  put 
forward,  and  the  problem  is  to  find  an  experiment  \vhich 


106     BEARINGS    OF   MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

will  decide  between  the  two.  At  first  sight  the  simplest 
plan  appears  to  be  to  take  two  groups  of  children,  living 
under  similar  conditions  and  who  have  not  begun  to 
learn  reading,  and  to  teach  one  group  by  one  method 
and  the  second  by  the  other  method.  Difficulties  would 
probably  arise  in  selecting  groups  of  approximately  equal 
ability  with  reference  to  a  literary  subject  like  reading, 
when  owing  to  the  conditions  of  the  experiment  it  is 
agreed  that  they  shall  have  done  no  previous  work  of 
this  kind.  Such  difficulties  might,  however,  be  practically 
overcome  by  duplicating  or  triplicating  the  experiment. 
A  much  more  serious  source  of  error  is  the  length  of 
time  over  which  such  an  experiment  must  extend  before 
any  decisive  result  can  be  attained,  because  conceivably 
one  method  might  be  more  successful  during  the  first 
few  weeks,  whilst  the  other  ultimately  proved  the  best. 
During  a  period  of  time  extending  beyond  a  few  weeks 
obviously  many  other  irrelevant  factors  are  likely  to 
appear  which  will  influence  the  result  and  whose  effect 
can  hardly  be  checked.  Hence  it  might  prove  advisable 
either  to  abandon  this  form  of  experiment  or  to  supple- 
ment it  by  others  extending  over  much  shorter  periods. 
These  experiments  might  be  made  with  children  who  had 
already  begun  to  learn  reading,  so  that  they  could  readily 
be  divided  into  groups  of  approximately  equal  ability 
with  respect  to  that  subject.  The  method  now  generally 
followed  in  making  such  a  division  deserves  a  brief  de- 
scription. A  test  in  reading  (or  whatever  subject  is  being 
used  for  the  experiment)  is  given  to  the  whole  group  of 
children.     The  children  are  classified  in  order  of  merit 


EXPERIMENT   IN   EDUCATION  107 

and  arranged  in  three  groups,  A,  B,  and  C  ;  the  first 
child  on  the  Hst  being  placed  in  A,  the  second  in  B,  the 
third  and  fourth  in  C,  the  fifth  in  B,  the  sixth  and  seventh 
in  A,  and  so  on,  till  the  list  is  exhausted.  This  preHminary 
test  may  of  course  be  repeated  two  or  more  times  to 
ensure  greater  accuracy.  The  three  groups  could  then 
be  treated  as  follows  :  A  taught  by  the  Look-and-Say 
method  for  a  given  number  of  lessons,  B  taught  by  the 
phonetic  method  for  a  like  number  of  lessons  under  as 
nearly  as  possible  similar  conditions,  C  given  no  reading 
lessons  at  all.  This  third  or  control  group  is  needed  to 
check  the  amount  of  progress,  if  any,  which  results  from 
natural  development  and  general  school  work.  Finally, 
the  three  groups  should  be  tested  again  and  the  results 
compared.  Two  difficulties  are,  however,  at  once  ap- 
parent. In  the  first  place,  previous  methods  of  learning 
may  affect  the  final  result.  If,  for  example,  these  methods 
have  been  chiefly  phonetic  the  progress  made  by  group 
B  may  be  partly  due  to  familiarity  with  that  type  of 
teaching.  This  difficulty  could  be  avoided  by  using  six 
groups  of  children,  three  previously  taught  phonetically, 
and  three  by  the  Look-and-Say  method.  A  more  com- 
plicated question  is  what  exactly  we  can  test  accurately 
in  reference  to  a  subject  like  reading.  Good  reading 
includes  technical  ability  to  read  the  words,  fluency,  in- 
telligence in  phrasing  and  understanding  of  the  subject 
matter.  Of  these  only  the  first  readily  lends  itself  to 
accurate  numerical  marking,  and  this  would  probably 
_be  all  that  could  be  tested  in  an  experiment  such  as  this. 
But  in  granting  this  we  open  up  a  variety  of  problems 


io8      BEARINGS   OF   MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

for  further  investigation.  The  Look-and-Say  method, 
for  instance,  may  teach  children  to  read,  as  adults  do, 
with  continual  reterence  to  the  context  and  to  the  mean 
ing  of  what  they  are  reading,  whereas  children  taught 
phonetically  may  dwell  too  much  on  each  word  and  fail 
to  get  the  general  sense.  If  this  were  so  the  latter  might 
progress  more  rapidly  in  technical  skill  and  yet  might 
read  less  intelligently  than  the  former.  Hence  the 
result  of  the  experiment  could  only  be  stated  in  terms 
of  technical  progress  and  could  not  be  regarded  as  deter- 
mining which  was  all  round  the  best  method.  For  this 
yet  further  investigation  would  be  needed.  Moreover, 
in  the  experiment  as  described,  we  have  entirely  neglected 
the  relation  of  reading  to  writing,  and  it  would  remain 
an  open  question  whether  the  method  found  best  for 
reading  in  itself  Avere  also  the  best  when  reading  and 
writing  are  taught  together  or  in  close  connection. 
Nor  again  would  it  necessarily  be  the  best  for  children 
whose  interests  lead  them  to  learn  to  write  first,  though 
this  is  probably  not  unusual  where  the  pupils  are  allowed 
to  follow  their  inclinations  in  the  matter  and  are  not 
bound  by  school  tradition. 

4.  In  all  experimental  work  in  education  the  assist- 
ance given  by  mathematical  and  statistical  science  is 
invaluable.  The  determination  of  the  probable  reliability 
of  the  results  and  the  grouping  of  data  so  as,  on  the  one 
hand,  to  avoid  suggesting  unwarranted  inferences,  and 
on  the  other,  to  secure  that  the  information  shall  be  put 
in  its  most  useful  and  convenient  form,  are  an  essential 
part  of  the  experiment.    Moreover,  experiments  must  be 


EXPERIMENT    IN    EDUCATION  109 

devised  so  that  exact  results  can  be  expected.  The  vague 
work  of  classifying  data  which  is  merely  subjective,  i.e. 
data  to  which  competent  observers  may  readily  give 
different  values  and  for  which  there  is  no  objective 
standard,  may  be  suggestive  but  can  seldom  or  never 
yield  reliable  results.  We  have  already  pointed  out  some 
of  the  difficulties  of  devising  suitable  tests  for  reading, 
and  in  most  other  experimental  work  similar  difficulties 
arise.  A  composition,  for  instance,  can  be  accurately 
marked  for  the  number  of  words  wrongly  spelled  or  for 
the  number  of  mistakes  in  grammar,  but  some  of  the 
mistakes  may  be  much  less  serious  than  others,  and  yet 
it  is  difficult  to  find  an  objective  standard  for  measuring 
this.  The  estimation  of  style  is  still  more  difficult, 
although  it  is  clear  that  classification  bywords — excellent, 
good,  fair,  and  so  on — is  merely  a  subjective  standard,  and 
that  there  will  be  serious  risk  of  error  on  the  marginal 
cases.  In  many  cases  indeed  several  preliminary  experi- 
ments will  be  necessary  in  order  to  show  exactly 
where  failure  yi  the  accuracy  of  the  methods  used 
is  likely  to  occur  and  also  to  show  what  exactly  it 
is  possible  to  test  by  experiment  if  accurate  results  are 
desired. 

The  knowledge  of  statistical  methods  required  both  to 
conduct  experimental  work  successfully  and  to  criticise 
it  is  indeed  still  a  pitfall  to  the  amateur  experimenter 
and  critic.  Even  such  words  as  '  average,'  '  median,' 
*  percentage,'  are  sources  of  confusion,  and  some  in- 
clusion of  the  elements  of  statistical  science  in  the  recog- 
nised  school   training  in   mathematics   is   much   to   be 


no   BEARINGS  OF  MODERN  PSYCHOLOGY 

desired  in  view  of  the  growing  importance  of  the  subject 
in  this  and  many  other  connections. 

One  other  point  of  interest  in  connection  with  ex- 
perimental psychology  and  its  applications  to  education 
is  its  value  as  an  introduction  to  the  study  of  general 
psychology.  The  working  of  simple  experiments,  many 
of  which  can  be  carried  out  without  special  apparatus, 
provides  excellent  practice  for  the  student  in  the  analysis 
of  mental  function.  And,  where  the  experiments  can 
be  worked  by  a  class,  the  differences  in  individual  results 
are  often  specially  suggestive.  Such  introductory  work 
appeals  to  many  students  to  whom  a  book  on  theory  would 
seem  dull  and  perhaps  incomprehensible,  and  after  the 
conclusion  of  the  experiments  they  will  be  ready  to 
work  back  to  the  theoretical  side  along  lines  of  interest 
and  understanding  already  aroused.  For  teachers 
especially  such  work  is  of  extreme  value  in  view  of  the 
constant  discussion  of  experimental  work  in  schools. 
Some  knowledge  of  actual  practical  work  is  the  best 
safeguard  against  over-credulity  in  accepting  half-proved 
results,  and  against  rashness  in  attempting  experiment 
with  inadequate  knowledge  of  method.  Experiments  in 
school  may,  of  course,  be  valuable  in  addition  to  such 
class  study  if  it  be  clearly  recognised  that  the  results 
obtained  by  unpractised  experimentalists  are  seldom  of 
value  in  themselves. 


CHAPTER  VII 

SPECIAL  STUDIES  IN  CONNECTION 
WITH  MEMORY 

The  concept  '  memory  '  has  undergone  as  many  changes 
recently  as  perhaps  any  other  used  in  psychology.  The 
word  itself  has  survived,  like  many  useful  terms,  from  a 
time  when  much  that  we  now  know  to  be  complex  was 
believed  to  be  simple,  and  when  memory  was  under- 
stood as  that  faculty  of  retaining  and  recalling  the  past 
which  in  some  people  was  '  good,'  and  in  others  '  bad.' 
Few  writers  now  dare  to  use  the  word  in  the  singular 
without  hastening  to  explain  that  they  mean  not 
'  memory '  but  '  memories,'  and  that  they  are  well 
aware  that  such  a  statement  as  "John  has  a  good  memory" 
is  meaningless  unless  we  say  to  which  of  John's  memories 
in  particular  we  refer.  Thus  we  must  distinguish 
rational  or  logical  memory  from  rote  memory,  visual 
memory  from  auditory  memory  and  from  all  the  other 
memories  connected  with  the  specific  senses.  In  addition 
we  have  a  memory  of  one  type  connected  with  one  sub- 
ject in  which  perhaps  we  are  interested,  whilst  in  other 
subjects  our  methods  of  recall  are  different  and  perhaps 
less  effective.    Finally,  we  can  speak  of  specific  memories 

HI 


112      BEARINGS    OF  MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

connected  with  different  kinds  of  objects,  the  concrete, 
the  abstract,  numbers,  colours,  shapes,  and  so  on. 

It  is  a  fact  well  known  to  teachers  that  children's 
memory  power  varies  according  to  the  subject  matter 
they  are  trying  to  recall,  and  the  same  point  can  easily 
be  verified  by  introspection.  Each  person,  whether 
child  or  adult,  usually  remembers  best  the  things  in 
which  he  is  most  interested.  For  one  thing  he  tends 
often  to  think  of  these  things,  so  that  his  knowledge  is 
frequently  recalled  and  thought  over,  and  thvis  becomes 
more  readily  available.  Again,  his  interest  leads  to  the 
formation  of  fresh  associations,  so  that  the  possible  links 
of  recall  are  increased  and  his  command  of  the  subject 
becomes  greater.  The  processes  of  observation  of  fresh 
matter  and  of  recall  of  what  was  previously  known  both 
work  most  readily  along  the  lines  of  interest.  Hence 
that  specialisation  of  attention  and  interest  which  we 
have  already  discussed  leads  also  to  a  speciahsed  memory 
which  is  likely  to  be  relatively  effective,  whereas  often 
the  memory  for  subjects  ovitside  the  individual's  dominant 
interests  will  be  proportionately  poor.  A  *  good  '  memory 
as  a  rule  means  good  in  respect  to  the  person's  chief 
interest,  or  perhaps  his  work,  where  the  power  naturally 
attracts  most  attention,  whilst  the  weakness  or  in- 
accuracy of  memory  in  other  directions  is  apt  to  be 
overlooked. 

Selective  attention,  which  depends  largely  on  the  ideas 
already  existing  in  the  child's  mind,  and  his  consequent 
power  of  understanding  new  facts  presented  to  him, 
determines  what  exactly  is  retained  out  of  the  numerous 


SPECIAL   STUDIES  :     MEMORY  113 

possibilities  offered  to  him.  Teachers  occasionally  com- 
plain, in  reference  to  such  a  subject  as  history  for  in- 
stance, that  the  children  remember  the  minor  personal 
details  and  little  stories  by  means  of  which  they  fondly 
believed  that  they  had  made  the  lesson  so  interesting 
that  all  the  important  facts  must  necessarily  be  retained. 
But  such  disappointing  results  are  inevitable  where  the 
*  facts '  are  so  uninteresting  to  the  child  or  so  badly 
presented  as  to  require  such  a  garnish  to  make  them 
'  go  down.'  The  child  naturally  remembers  that  part 
of  the  lesson  which  appeals  to  his  existing  interests  and 
is  suited  to  his  stage  of  development.  If  his  mental 
content  is  such  that  the  story  of  the  cakes,  for  example, 
is  within  his  grasp,  whereas  Alfred's  struggle  with  the 
Danes  is  not,  he  will  remember  the  former  and  forget, 
or  rather  never  really  apprehend,  the  latter.  Nor  can 
the  teacher  avoid  the  difficulty  by  leaving  out  the  cakes 
and  confining  himself  to  the  Danes,  for  then  he  may 
find  that  most  of  his  class  remember  nothing  at  all,  or 
remember  in  such  a  confused  way  that  they  had  better 
have  forgotten.^  t  Such  difficulties  arise  from  a  bad 
selection  of  subject  matter,  perhaps  in  this  case  owing  to 
undue  reverence  for  a  text-book  type  of  fact.  Of  such 
facts  some  teachers  unfortunately  still  feel  that  all 
children  must  learn  a  certain  minimum,  to  ensure  which 
they  begin  teaching  them  when  the  child  is  too  young 
and  when  they  are  unsuited  to  his  existing  interests. 
The  teacher  may  be  partly  comforted  for  the  child's 
forgetfulness  by  the  reflection  that  no  historical  fact  is 
important  enough  to  children  to  be  worth  a  coating  of 


114      BEARINGS   OF   MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

irrelevant  matter  to  secure  its  retention,  and  may  rest 
assured  that  the  child  is  better  for  the  present  with 
Alfred  and  the  cakes  as  one  of  his  many  stories,  or  even 
better  still  without  Alfred  at  all.  To  some  extent,  indeed, 
what  a  child  readily  remembers  is  a  test  of  what  he  is 
fit  to  be  taught  or  to  be  allowed  to  learn.  Many  children 
are  capable  of  an  intelligent  interest  in  history  at  an  age 
when  others  can  only  remember  the  garnish  of  tales  : 
many  more  can  be  easily  stimulated  to  interest  in  social 
life  and  in,  say,  the  more  exciting  battles.  The  rest 
should  be  allowed  to  remain  at  the  story  stage  for  a  time 
so  far  as  history  is  concerned. 

Not  only,  however,  does  the  power  of  memory  vary 
according  to  the  subject  matter  to  be  recalled,  but 
memories  also  vary  in  type.  These  types  or  methods 
of  recall  are  connected  with  mental  imagery.  As  objects 
present  themselves  to  us  they  stimulate  various  sense 
organs.  When  we  see  a  flower,  for  instance,  we  may  also 
smell  and  touch  it  and  our  recollection  of  it  may  be  in 
the  form  of  a  visual  image  of  the  appearance  of  the 
flower,  of  an  image  of  its  smell,  or  of  an  image  of  its 
feel,  or  we  may  be  able  to  recall  it  by  all  three  images. 
In  other  cases  we  may  have  an  image  of  a  taste,  an 
auditory  image  of  a  sound,  a  kinaesthetic  image  of  the 
muscular  sensations  involved  in  making  a  certain  move- 
ment, and  so  on.  Most  people  seem  to  have  one  type  of 
imagery  which  /they  use  more  readily  and  frequently 
than  others,  but  they  can  often  produce  other  types 
when  they  make  any  effort  to  do  so,  and  may  also  pass 
from  one  type  to  another  without  effort,  according  to 


SPECIAL   STUDIES  :     MEMORY  115 

changes  in  the  subject  matter  they  are  trying  to  recall. 
Thus  a  person  who  relies  mainly  on  visual  or  auditory 
imagery  in  repeating  an  English  poem  silently  will  at 
once  use  kinaesthetic  imagery  in  changing  to  a  French 
or  German  one.  In  this  case,  no  doubt,  the  extra  care 
and  attention  given  to  pronouncing  the  foreign  sounds 
when  the  poem  was  learnt  have  caused  the  memory  of 
the  muscular  sensations  to  be  retained  here,  whilst  it  is 
lost  in  the  case  of  the  English  poem. 

Moreover,  a  person  whose  imagery  is  weak  in  certain 
directions  can  apparently  improve  it  by  practice,  i.e.  by 
conscious  efforts  to  recall  objects  in  that  particular  way. 
Hence  any  attempt  to  classify  people  according  to  the 
type  of  imagery  they  most  readily  employ  is  apt  to  be 
misleading.  Again,  it  is  doubtful  whether  any  general 
statement,  such  as  that  abstract  thinkers  have  not  as  a 
rule  much  power  of  visual  imagery,  is  legitimate  at 
present. 

Imagery  of  all  the  types  varies  widely  in  vividness  and 
accuracy  in  different  individuals.  Visual  images,  for 
instance,  vary  from  a  clear,  detailed  and  properly  coloured 
picture  to  a  blurred  greyish  one.  It  is  the  same  with 
imagery  connected  with  the  other  senses.  Some  in- 
dividuals, for  instance,  have  complex  auditory  images  of, 
say,  orchestral  music,  in  which  the  different  instruments 
can  be  distinguished  ;  others  cannot  even  image  a  simple 
tune  or  phrase.  In  fact  study  of  the  subject  has  revealed 
a  multitude  of  unsuspected  individual  differences  in  the 
kind  and  quality  of  imagery,  unsuspected  because  every- 
one naturally  supposes  that  his  own  type  of  imagery  is 


ii6      BEARINGS   OF   MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

the  normal  one  until  he  discusses  the  subject  with  other 
people.  Even  after  such  discussion  it  is  difficult  for 
anyone  who,  say,  habitually  employs  visual  imagery  to 
imagine  what  thought  may  be  like  without  this  accom- 
paniment, though  he  must  perforce  believe  in  its  exist- 
ence. 

It  remains,  then,  to  consider  some  of  the  uses  of  these 
memory  images.  In  some  cases,  of  course,  the  image 
is  itself  what  we  want  to  recall  and  its  vividness  and 
accuracy  measures  the  effectiveness  of  that  particular 
memory.  Thus  auditory  or  kinaesthetic  imagery  seems 
essential  to  the  recall  of  a  tune,  and  both  usually  play  an 
important  part  in  remembering  words  in  a  foreign 
language.  The  modern  reliance  on  phonetics  in  language 
training  is  the  outcome  of  a  recognition  of  the  value  of 
kinaesthetic  memory  in  enabling  us  to  reproduce  sounds. 
Even  quite  young  children  can  be  interested  in  the 
position  of  their  lips  and  tongues  when  speaking,  and 
can  be  helped  to  correct  pronunciation  through  this 
interest. 

Visual  memory  also  has  obvious  uses.  Some  people 
can  picture  whole  pages  of  a  book  or  of  lecture  notes, 
and  can  thus  practically  read  off  what  they  wish  to  recall. 
Others  habitually  make  a  visual  image  map  of  their  town 
or  district,  and  can  readily  find  their  way  about  in  streets 
which  are  themselves  unfamiliar  by  the  help  of  known 
positions  fixed  on  this  map.  Others  make  use  of  images 
of  geometrical  figures  or  of  numbers  in  solving  problems, 
and  children  of  mathematical  tastes  sometimes  use  this 
facility  to  occupy  themselves  when  they  are  bored  with 


SPECIAL   STUDIES  :    MEMORY  117 

lying  awake  at  night.  Others  again  can  image  more^or  less 
definite  charts  of  historical  events  by  the  help  of ^ which 
they  readily  place  any  given  event  in  its  proper  setting. 
Even  vague  imagery  of  various  kinds  may  be  valuable, 
and  teachers  should  be  on  the  look  out  to  encourage  all 
available  forms.  But  it  is  important  to  remember  that 
some  of  the  most  serviceable  images,  according  to  intro- 
spective evidence,  are  not  reproductive  of  anything 
actually  seen,  but  constructive,  i.e.  made  up  out  of 
combinations  of  known  elements.  Thus  in  the  case  of 
one  observer  the  visual  image  map  referred  to  above 
consists,  in  regard  to  London,  of  a  series  of  vague  images 
of  the  appearance  of  certain  well-known  streets  placed 
rouglily  in  position  something  after  the  fashion  of  an 
old  pictorial  map,  with  blurs  in  between  for  the  less 
famihar  or  less  striking  streets.  In  this  case  the  appear- 
ance of  the  streets  is  of  course  reproduced,  but  their 
arrangement  in  position,  so  as  to  give  a  kind  of  bird's-eye 
view,  is  constructive.  This  image  never  appears  as  a 
whole,  including  all  a  know^n  portion  of  the  town,  but 
only  in  sections ;  the  relative  position  of  these  is,  how- 
ever, generally  remembered,  and  considerable  discomfort 
is  felt  in  unfamiliar  districts  until  the  visual  '  map '  can 
be  mentally  constructed  and  placed  in  correct  position 
in  reference  to  something  already  known.  It  may  be 
noted  that  visual  images  of  the  street  map  habitually 
used  are  seldom  obtained,  and  are  in  any  case  too  vague 
to  be  of  much  use.  A  teacher  could  hardly  help  directly 
in  the  formation  of  imagery  of  this  kind,  whose  practical 
value  is  nevertheless  obvious. 


ii8      BEARINGS   OF   MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

Imaged  history  charts  are  apparently  apt  to  bear  the 
same  individual  constructive  character,  and  are  often 
not  reproductions  of  any  chart  actually  seen.  Whether 
the  use  of  a  wall  history  chart  in  school  would  help  or 
hinder  the  formation  of  such  individual  types  of  imagery 
is  at  present  doubtful,  but  it  is  probable  that  many 
children  who  can  form  no  imaged  chart  for  themselves 
will  be  able  to  reproduce  the  one  frequently  used  and  to 
adapt  it  to  their  own  purposes. 

Various  interesting  points  concerning  the  develop- 
ment and  value  of  mental  imagery  await  further  in- 
vestigation, but  for  the  present  it  seems  reasonable  to 
conclude  that  the  class  teacher  should  seek  help  from  all 
suitable  types  as  opportunity  offers.  Children  should  be 
encouraged  to  see,  hear,  touch  and  do,  vv'henever  possible, 
so  that  they  may  not  have  to  depend  on  one  type  of 
image  alone.  The  muscular  activity  of  '  doing '  is 
especially  valuable  not  only  because  of  the  possible  value 
of  the  kinaesthetic  imagery  thus  obtained,  but  because 
it  generally  demands  more  prolonged  and  careful  atten- 
tion on  the  part  of  the  child  and  may  thus  help  other 
forms  of  memory  as  well.  This  is  the  case,  for  instance, 
when  a  child  writes  a  word  in  addition  to  seeing  it 
written  or  spelling  it  aloud. 

So  far  we  have  considered  only  those  memory  images 
which  serve  a  definite  purpose,  but  thought  processes  are 
usually  accompanied  by  much  imagery,  which  is  more  or 
less  irrelevant  and  may  even  hinder  the  formation  of 
clear  ideas.  This  imagery  is  often  due  to  associations 
formed  when  the  particular  fact  or  event  of  which  we 


SPECIAL   STUDIES  :     MEMORY  119 

are  thinking  was  first  presented  to  us,  or  which  have 
grown  up  by  constant  or  specially  vivid  presentation  of 
an  object  in  a  particular  form.  The  words  Justice, 
Love,  are  apt  to  call  up  in  the  minds  of  visualisers  the 
images  of  a  draped,  blindfolded  figure  holding  scales 
and  of  a  naked  boy  with  wings ;  images  evidently  due 
to  familiarity  with  certain  pictures.  These  associated 
memory  images  may  sometimes  give  a  misleading  or 
ludicrous  colour  to  the  thought,  as  often  happens  in 
the  case  of  imagery  connected  with  hymns  which  we 
learnt  in  childhood  and  only  half  understood.  Often 
they  are  merely  irrelevant,  occasionally  they  are  sugges- 
tive, or  again  they  may  prove  an  insurmountable  obstacle 
to  the  formation  of  new  constructive  images  in  connec- 
tion with  the  subject.  One  observer,  for  instance,  states 
that  she  is  often  hindered  in  constructing  images  of 
scenery  described  in  a  book  by  the  persistence  of  a  mental 
image  of  the  map  of  the  country  referred  to.  Something 
of  this  sort  happens  when  we  try  to  recall  a  certain  tune 
and  find  ourselves  always  lapsing  into  another  which 
contains  a  similar  phrase.  For  a  like  reason  many  people 
object  to  reading  an  illustrated  novel  because  the  pic- 
tures when  once  seen  persist  in  memory  and  prevent 
them  from  constructing  their  own  images  of  the  char- 
acters and  scenes.  Teachers  need  to  be  prepared  for  this 
more  or  less  irrelevant  imagery  in  children,  since  it  often 
lends  an  unexpected  colour  to  the  subject  matter  of  the 
lesson. 

More  important  for  teaching  purposes,  however,   is 
the  part  played  by  the  child's  stock  of  memory  images 


120      BEARINGS   OF  MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

in  forming  new  constructive  imagery  of  things  described 
or  read  about.  This  stock  can  be  usefully  increased  by 
letting  the  children  see  good  pictures,  just  as  it  may  be 
spoiled  by  familiarity  with  poor  ones,  and  its  possession 
may  considerably  enhance  their  powers  of  literary  ap- 
preciation, their  understanding  of  books  of  travel,  their 
enjoyment  of  history,  and  so  on.  Frequent  demands 
are  made  in  school  on  this  ability  to  construct  images, 
and  teachers  are  apt  to  over-estimate  what  children  can 
do  in  this  respect,  because  they  forget  that  all  such 
imagery  must  be  based  on  past  experience.  The  child 
must  have  in  his  memory  the  ingredients,  as  it  were,  of 
the  picture  he  is  to  make  up  in  order  that  the  description 
may  enable  him  to  group  these  together.  And  it  is  well 
to  remember  that  if  the  child  is  interested,  which  we 
may  presuppose,  he  will  not  be  beaten  by  lack  of  suit- 
able ingredients  but  will  construct  some  sort  of  image, 
the  misleading  nature  of  which  may  never  be  discovered 
unless  his  confusion  leads  him  to  make  some  absurd 
mistake.  For  the  most  part  children  attach  more  mean- 
ing to  a  description  if  it  is  connected  with  and  essential 
to  some  action.  Indeed  even  adults  generally  get  a 
better  idea  of  a  country  from  reading  an  interesting  book 
of  travel  than  from  a  descriptive  geography.  The  time 
taken  to  cross  a  forest,  the  exhaustion  after  an  hour's 
walk  in  soft  snow,  the  rescue  of  sledge  dogs  from  a  crevasse 
all  give  at  least  a  fairly  correct  working  notion  of  the 
things  described,  and  of  their  effect  on  practical  problems. 
Good  constructive  pictures,  based  on  description  as  such, 
are  formed  with  difficulty  even  by  adults  who  habitually 


SPECIAL   STUDIES  :     MEMORY  121 

visualise,  but   descriptions    connected    with    action    are 
readily  appreciated  even  where  visual  imagery  is  weak. 

Apart  from  the  recognition  of  different  types  of 
memory  image,  experimental  work  has  led  to  much 
interesting  analysis  of  the  functioning  of  memories.  In 
the  first  place,  we  must  distinguish  primary  or  immediate 
memory,  that  is,  ability  to  recall  a  thing  immediately 
after  it  has  been  learnt,  from  memory  in  the  more  ordin- 
ary sense  which  involves  retention.  Immediate  memory 
appears  to  be  decidedly  v/eaker  in  children  than  in  adults, 
and  it  is  well  known  that  children  who  are  otherwise 
intelligent  often  have  difficulty  in  repeating  the  exact 
words  of  messages  w^hen  asked  what  they  have  been  told 
to  say.  Binet  makes  use  in  his  intelligence  tests  of 
the  fact  that  this  immediate  memory  strengthens  as 
children  grow  older,  by  requiring  them  to  repeat  several 
figures,  or  a  short  sentence,  immediately  after  hearing 
them  said.  On  the  other  hand,  children  retain  what  they 
h^e  learnt  rather  better  than  adults,  and  the  retentive 
powers  appear  to  reach  their  maximum  efficiency  at  the 
age  of  thirteen  or  fourteen.  But  it  is  also  necessary  in 
respect  to  children,  to  distinguish  special  memories  for 
certain  classes  of  objects.  Thus  memory  for  concrete 
objects,  numbers,  abstract  words,  and  so  on,  varies  at 
different  stages  of  development,  as  indeed  we  should 
expect  from  the  close  connection  between  memory  and 
interest.  The  child  learns  more  slowly  than  the  adult, 
and  in  addition  he  learns  certain  things  more  slowly  at 
certain  stages  of  his  growth.  There  is  also  some  evidence 
to  show  that  good  physical  development  tends  to  coincide 


122      BEARINGS   OF   MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

with  good  immediate  and  retentive  memories.  It 
appears,  too,  that  children  have  not  specially  good 
rote  or  mechanical  memory  as  distinct  from  logical 
memory  of  subject  matter  that  is  clearly  understood. 
Apparent  improvement  in  the  retentive  powers  of  a 
given  individual,  apart  from  that  due  to  natural  growth 
or  to  increased  interest  in  the  subject  matter,  seems  to 
resolve  itself  mainly  into  improved  methods  of  learning, 
a  more  reasoned  presentation  of  subject  matter,  the 
formation  of  suitable  associations,  and  so  on.  Most  of 
these,  in  the  case  of  children,  depend  on  the  teacher,  so 
that  it  is  along  such  lines  that  attempts  may  be  legiti- 
mately made  to  improve  the  pupils'  memories.  But  the 
old-fashioned  belief  in  the  excellence  of  children's 
memories  must  in  the  main  be  given  up.  It  may  have 
arisen  partly  from  their  slightly  greater  native  retentive- 
ness,  but  was  probably  due  in  the  main  to  the  fact  that 
constant  more  or  less  mechanical  '  learning  by  heart ' 
was  insisted  upon  in  schools  to  an  extent  to  which  no 
adult  would  submit,  so  that  no  standard  of  comparison 
for  the  memories  of  adults  and  children  was  available. 
Indeed,  considering  the  time  occupied  by  such  learning 
and  by  frequent  repetition,  the  amount  that  the  children 
remembered  was,  in  fact,  less  surprising  than  the  amount 
they  yet  managed  to  forget.  In  reahty  some  part  of 
the  supposed  fixity  of  things  learnt  in  childhood  depends 
on  the  fact  that  we  have  been  fortunate  enough  to  learn 
things  which  we  have  frequently  used.  Few  people 
forget  the  alphabet  or  the  multiplication  table,  but 
many  of  us  forget  the  hymns  we  learnt  as  children,  and 


SPECIAL   STUDIES  :     MEMORY  123 

those  of  us  who  cease  to  read  history  forget  the 
'  dates '  we  used  to  reel  off  by  heart.  These  considera- 
tions and  the  time  taken  up  by  memory  work  shoidd 
make  educators  cautious  in  advocating  much  learning 
by  heart  in  schools.  Care  should  be  taken  to  select  only 
such  things  for  learning  as  are  likely  to  be  useful  or 
pleasant  as  a  possession  throughout  life,  and  in  allotting 
the  memory  work  to  different  periods  of  the  child's  time 
at  school  teachers  should  take  into  account  all  available 
evidence  as  to  the  age  when  special  memories  for  different 
types  of  subject  matter  are  likely  to  be  most  effective. 
The  learning  of  things  whose  frequent  usefulness  is 
doubtful  may  for  the  most  part  be  left  until  they  are 
actually  needed,  or  at  least  may  be  demanded  only  from 
children  whose  memorising  or  retentive  powers,  or  both, 
are  specially  good.  Thus  most  historical  dates,  many 
geographical  '  facts,'  all  but  the  most  useful  mathe- 
matical formulas,  irregular  verbs  in  foreign  languages — 
to  mention  a  few  of  the  things  frequently  memorised  in 
schools,  may  in  general  be  treated  in  this  way.  Some  of 
them  will  be  memorised  unconsciously  as  they  occur  in 
ordinary  school  work,  and  the  rest  may  be  learnt  later 
on  if  and  when  they  are  needed.  They  will  indeed  be 
learnt  more  rapidly  and  intelligently  because  they  are 
needed  for  a  purpose,  and  even  if  they  are  sooner  forgotten 
they  will  probably  be  retained  long  enough,  i.e.  as  long 
as  the  learner  is  working  at  the  particular  subject  in 
question.  The  learning  of  poetry  by  heart  can  of  course 
be  justified  on  the  ground  that  its  knowledge  is  a  pleasant 
and  valuable  possession,  akin  to  the  musician's  ability  to 


124      BEARINGS   OF   MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

play  without  notes.  But  it  is  unlikely  to  be  a  pleasant 
possession  except  to  such  children,  and  they  arc  usually 
in  the  majority,  who  take  genuine  pleasure  in  learning 
poetry. 

Much  learning  by  rote  in  school  has  until  lately  been 
advocated  on  the  ground  that  it '  trained  '  the  memory — 
a  particularly  attractive  aspect  of  the  theory  of  formal 
training.  This  contention  has  been  made  the  subject  of 
investigation  of  a  number  of  experiments.  The  results 
of  some  of  these,  or  at  least  the  inferences  based  upon 
them,  have  been  conflicting,  but  the  most  recent  series, 
those  conducted  in  London  by  Sleight,  seem  to  give 
good  ground  for  denying  any  transference  of  memory 
power,  as  such,  from  one  subject  to  another.  In  brief, 
practice  in  memory  work  in  one  subject,  though  of  course 
we  may  expect  improvement  in  this  particular  subject, 
will  not  cause  improvement  in  learning  other  material, 
even  when  this  is  somewhat  similar  to  that  used  for 
practice,  unless  the  learner  consciously  or  unconsciously 
applies  better  methods  of  learning  to  the  second  task, 
because  he  has  used  them  during  the  practice.  His 
memory,  as  such,  will  not  improve,  but  his  intelligence 
in  setting  to  work  may.  In  fact  he  may  acquire  a  service- 
able concept  of  method  which  he  can  apply  in  learning 
different  material.  To  make  use  of  rhythmic  intonation 
in  learning  may  be  given  as  one  illustration  of  a  simple 
concept  of  method,  another,  much  neglected  by  children, 
is  to  obtain  a  clear  understanding  of  the  subject  matter 
to  be  learnt  before  attempting  to  memorise  it.  This 
view  will  be  welcome  to  the  intelligent  teacher,  who  is 


SPECIAL   STUDIES  :     MEMORY  125 

thus  freed  from  the  responsibility  of  urging  con- 
tinual rote  learning  upon  his  pupils,  whilst  numerous 
possibilities  of  helping  them  to  acquire  rational 
methods  of  attacking  their  work  will  suggest  them- 
selves to  him. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

SPECIAL  STUDIES  IN  CONNECTION 
WITH  ADOLESCENCE 

The  phenomena  connected  with  adolescence  have  received 
much  attention  during  recent  years  and  their  study  now 
almost  forms  a  special  branch  of  educational  psychology. 
Stanley  Hall's  work  on  the  subject  is  probably  the  best 
known,  but  in  addition  to  his  books  there  are  numerous 
others  which  treat  the  subject  from  various  points  of 
view  and  employ  various  methods  of  study.  Some  of 
these  are  based  on  answers  to  questionnaires,  a  plan  which 
has  been  more  popular  in  America  than  in  this  country, 
and  the  results  of  which,  while  often  intensely  interesting 
and  suggestive,  perhaps  tend  to  accentuate  the  more 
exciting  but  probably  more  abnormal  phases  at  the 
expense  of  those  comparatively  dull  experiences  Avhich 
may  nevertheless  be  commoner.  Others  again  are  based 
on  evidence  gathered  from  special  knowledge  of  adoles- 
cents in  schools  or  in  boys'  and  girls'  clubs.  The  latter 
type  of  evidence  is  often  particularly  interesting,  since 
the  boys  and  girls  observed  are  no  longer  under  the 
restraint  of  school  discipline,  and  their  tendencies  and 
needs    are   consequently    more   freely   expressed.      The 

126 


SPECIAL  STUDIES  :     ADOLESCENCE         127 

absence  of  restraint  also  shows  up  more  vividly  some  of 
the  dangers  of  adolescence,  which  if  not  wholly  guarded 
against  in  school,  are  at  least  thrust  under  the  surface. 
Other  studies,  and  these  by  no  means  the  least  valuable, 
take  the  form  of  the  biographical  novel  of  wliich  Richard 
Feverel  may  be  instanced  as  the  classical  type,  or  of  auto- 
biography. 

The  practical  outcome  of  these  numerous  studies  is, 
however,  somewhat  depressing  for  the  teacher.  The 
result  of  his  reading  may  be  to  leave  him  on  the  one  hand 
with  a  perhaps  salutary  sense  of  the  dangers  of  the 
adolescent  period,  and  on  the  other  with  a  sense  of  his 
own  powerlessness  to  deal  effectively  with  the  problem, 
since  indeed  it  often  seems  that  it  is  the  influence- of  the 
boy's  or  girl's  contemporaries  that  counts  at  this  stage 
rather  than  that  of  his  elders.  Some  suggestions  and 
hints,  both  positive  and  negative,  can,  however,  be 
gathered,  and  it  is  the  purpose  of  this  chapter  to  sum- 
marise these  while  at  the  same  time  giving  a  brief  de- 
scription of  the  characteristics  which  are  held  to  mark 
off  the  adolescent  stage  from  those  which  precede  and 
follow  it. 

The  age  boundaries  of  adolescence  are  ill-defined, 
and  vary,  not  only  as  we  should  expect,  in  different 
races  and  under  different  climatic  conditions,  but  also 
in  different  individuals  of  the  same  race  and  living  in 
the  same  country.  Roughly  speaking,  for  English 
children  we  may  expect  adolescence  to  begin  about  the 
age  of  twelve  or  thirteen  and  to  end,  at  least  in  its  most 
marked  form,  about  nineteen  or  twenty.   But  some  writers 


128      BEARINGS   OF   MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

trace  the  influence  of  sexual  preoccupation  back  into 
earlier  childhood,  and  some  of  the  characteristics  of 
adolescence  persist  under  favourable  conditions,  as,  for 
example,  at  the  Universities,  through  the  first  years  of 
the  tw^enties.  Physiologically,  the  age  is  marked  by  thf 
development  of  the  sex  organs  and  of  the  secondary  sex 
characteristics.  In  both  sexes  a  certain  instability  in 
physical  strength  and  development  is  the  result.  Both 
are  specially  liable  to  acquire  certain  diseases,  such  as 
tuberculosis,  and  both  seem  to  alternate  physically 
between  periods  of  unusual  energy  and  w^ell-being,  and 
periods  of  inertia  and  slackness.  This  points  to  a  less 
rigid  school  discipline  and  to  a  sympathetic  recognition 
of  the  fact  that  the  same  ground  may  be  covered  by  fits 
and  starts  as  well  as  by  steady  application.  At  the  same 
time  there  is  risk  of  over-pressure,  both  in  school  work 
and  in  games,  and  for  this  both  teachers  and  parents 
have  to  be  on  the  look  out.  But  a  mechanical  plan  of 
urging  forward  the  slack  and  pulling  back  the  keen  may 
be  merely  stupid  and  lead  to  unnecessary  friction  in  many 
cases.  In  the  main,  however,  these  physical  questions 
are  matters  for  the  doctor  rather  than  for  the  teacher  or 
parent,  who  need  rather  to  provide  themselves  with  the 
necessary  medical  advice  in  any  doubtful  cases  than  to 
form  theories  of  their  own  on  the  subject. 

The  mental  and  moral  characteristics  of  adolescence 
are  naturally  in  large  measure  interdependent  with  the 
physical,  but  their  treatment  is  more  particularly  the 
responsibility  of  the  educator,  who  therefore  needs  tq 
study  them  more  carefully. 


SPECIAL   STUDIES  :     ADOLESCENCE         129 

I.  In  the  first  place,  there  is  the  development  of  the 
sex  instinct  and  its  emotional  effects.  Civilised  peoples 
have  to  face  the  fact  that  this  instinct  appears  long  before 
its  direct  satisfaction  by  marriage  is  either  possible  under 
existing  social  conditions,  or  it  would  appear  even 
physiologically  desirable.  Luckily  the  sex  instinct  appears 
particularly  well  fitted  to  act  as  a  driving  force  in  a 
variety  of  directions.  It  may  find  outlets  in  boy-  and  girl- 
hood and  in  early  man-  and  womanhood  in  poetry, 
painting  and  all  forms  of  art,  in  the  preparation  for  a 
career,  in  a  general  thirst  for  knowledge,  whether  of 
books  or  through  experience,  and  in  the  energies  of  the 
social  reformer.  In  fact  the  force  of  the  sex-impulse 
seems  to  overflow  into  and  strengthen  most  of  the  other 
instinctive  tendencies,  and  to  find  some  of  its  most 
valuable  expression  through  them. 

A  much  disputed  problem  which  arises  in  connection 
with  the  sex  instinct  itself  is  how  and  when  children 
should  be  instructed  in  sex  hygiene,  the  functions  of  the 
sex  organs,  and  other  kindred  subjects.  The  older  plan 
of  drawing  a  veil  over  all  such  matters,  hushing  up  all 
discussion  and  questions  about  them  and  leaving  it  to 
chance  and  the  child's  companions  when  and  what  he 
learnt  to  understand  is  now  generally  admitted  to  be 
unsatisfactory.  The  system  was  perhaps  effective  in 
keeping  such  knowledge  from  girls  in  the  upper  and 
middle  classes  when  home  education  was  commonly  the 
rule.  Healthy  and  well-occupied  girls  sometimes  re- 
mained surprisingly  ignorant  until  after  they  grew  up,  a 
few  were  even  left  criminally  ignorant  until  they  married. 

M.P.  —  9 


130      BEARINGS    OF   MODERN    PSYCHOLOGY 

But  in  most  cases  the  result  was  not  ignorance  but 
knowledge  gathered  stealthily  as  a  forbidden  thing,  and 
often  picked  up  from  contemporaries  or  half-educated 
elders  who  neither  understood  the  child's  needs  nor 
cared  in  what  form  the  information  was  put.  Anything 
connected  with  sex  was  thus  looked  upon  as  half  improper 
and  half  a  joke,  and  the  element  of  secrecy  added  zest 
to  both  these  aspects.  Few  people  would  care  to  let 
religious  knowledge  be  picked  up  by  children  in  this 
haphazard  way,  and  there  seems  no  reason  why  the 
question  of  sex,  whose  importance  no  one  denies,  should 
be  treated  less  conscientiously.  In  fact  the  objection  to 
giving  the  child  all  the  knowledge  he  seeks,  and  indeed 
encouraging  him  to  seek  it,  is  based  on  the  feelings  of 
the  adult  rather  than  on  regard  for  the  welfare  of  the 
child.  The  knowledge  will  not  hurt  him,  but  it  may 
frequently  embarrass  his  elders  to  give  it,  and  his  subse- 
quent remarks  will  almost  certainly  be  at  times  discon- 
certing to  those  trained  under  the  earlier  system  of 
mystery.  Moreover,  few  of  us,  brought  up  as  we  have 
been,  are  able  to  talk  to  children  as  freely  and  naturally 
as  is  desirable,  and  our  conscientious  efforts  to  overcome 
embarrassment  may  make  matters  worse.  Nevertheless 
the  effort  is  worth  while. 

The  question  remains  when  and  how  the  information 
should  be  given.  The  answers  to  this  have  been  various 
enough.  Some  writers  say  that  the  matter  should  be 
approached  through  a  study  of  plants  and  animals,  and 
this  certainly  works  well  with  many  children.  It  is 
indeed  probably  the  best  for  those  who  have  to  learn 


SPECIAL   STUDIES  :     ADOLESCENCE         131 

these  things,  if  at  all,  in  schools,  since  the  subject  is  thus 
taken  in  the  ordinary  course  and  the  teacher  is  provided 
with  a  straightforward  method  of  approaching  the  topic. 
In  many  cases,  however,  the  child's  interest  is  aroused  in 
the  human  aspect  of  the  question,  as,  for  instance,  by 
the  birth  of  a  younger  brother  or  sister,  before  he  takes 
any  interest  in  that  side  of  plant  and  animal  life.  In 
such  cases  the  only  plan  seems  to  be  to  give  frankly  such 
explanations  as  the  child  can  grasp  as  soon  as  his  curiosity 
is  aroused,  and  subsequently  to  encourage  occasional 
conversations  on  the  subject  and  to  answer  questions 
readily.  It  is  also  desirable  to  follow  up  the  knowledge 
of  human  functions  thus  gained  by  some  study  of  plants 
and  animals,  so  that  the  child  may  get  some  idea  of  the 
interconnection  of  things.  The  task  is  difficult  enough, 
as  anyone  who  has  attempted  it  will  readily  acknowledge, 
and  the  child's  questions  are  at  times  impossible  to  answer 
in  any  way  that  it  can  really  understand.  Still  the  point 
is  gained  that  he  learns  to  ask  questions  instead  of  brood- 
ing over  his  puzzles,  and  that  he  gains  enough  knowledge 
to  save  him  from  the  shock  of  an  ill-timed  discovery  later 
on.  All  this  applies  to  young  children  from  the  age  of 
five  onwards.  Later  on,  at  the  age  of  twelve  or  thirteen, 
some  teaching  in  sex  hygiene  is  probably  advisable  as  a 
direct  preparation  for  adolescence.  This  is  sufficiently 
easy,  since  the  ground  has  been  already  prepared,  and  it 
may  even  be  done  by  the  provision  of  a  suitable  book 
for  the  boy  or  girl  to  read. 

2.  In   the  second   place  we  may  note   the  widening 
and    intensifying    of    the    instinct    of    curiosity.      This 


132      BEARINGS    OF   MODERN    PSYCHOLOGY 

instinct  combines  with  the  spirit  of  adventure  and  the 
desire  to  do  and  experience  on  the  one  hand,  and  with 
the  growing  intellectual  power  on  the  other.  The  result 
may  be  an  intense  interest  in  books,  especially,  owing  to 
the  attraction  of  the  personal  element,  in  biography  and 
history.  Or  it  may  be  an  eagerness  for  scientific  work. 
Some  boys  run  away  to  sea,  others  devote  themselves  to 
games.  In  nearly  all  cases  we  find,  temporarily  at  any 
rate,  a  marked  development  of  independent  thought  and 
of  the  critical  faculty.  Everything  must  be  tested  by  the 
adolescent's  own  knowledge  and  experience.  He  takes 
nothing  on  trust,  and  is  often  embarrassingly  unwilling 
to  accept  the  opinions  of  his  elders.  At  the  same  time 
he  is  equally  open  to  suggestion  from  those  whom  he 
loves  and  admires.  Unfortunately,  too,  where  suitable 
outlets  for  his  intellectual  and  other  energies  are  not 
available,  he  may  end  in  wild  revolt  against  authority 
and  sometimes  in  crime. 

3.  Thirdly,  the  social  instincts  are  accentuated.  The 
adolescent  is  amazingly  and  genuinely  altruistic  in  his 
theories  and  is  intermittently  unselfish  in  his  practice. 
He  now,  in  fact,  begins  to  form  those  abstract  sentiments 
which  were  rare  or  impossible  in  his  earlier  years.  His 
intolerance  is  partly  due  to  the  width  of  these  sentiments. 
His  justice,  his  truthfulness  and  his  patriotism  admit  no 
compromise  and  allow  no  compassion  for  the  individual 
who  fails  to  live  up  to  the  universal  standard.  He  readily 
forms  such  ideals,  or  accepts  them  from  his  friends,  and 
many  of  us,  like  the  hero  in  Tono  Bungay,  look  back 
with  half-respectful  admiration  on  our  youthful  ideals 


SPECIAL   STUDIES  :    ADOLESCENCE         133 

and  sentiments  and  capacity  for  self-sacrifice.  Nor  can 
we  help  regretting,  in  spite  of  its  uncomfortable  results, 
our  adolescent  scorn  of  the  feeble  compromises  of  later 
life. 

Widening  social  ideals  are  often  connected  with  love 
and  friendship  for  elders  and  contemporaries  of  either 
sex.  The  adolescent  reads  into  his  hero  all  the  qualities 
that  he  most  admires,  and  it  is  sometimes  a  comfort  to 
those  who  look  on  that  the  influence  of  even  a  poor  sort 
of  hero  may  be  much  better  than  his  actual  character 
justifies.  Friendships,  which  provide  opportunities  for 
the  discussion  and  exposition  of  all  kinds  of  theories  and 
beliefs,  are  perhaps  one  of  the  most  important  means 
of  education  at  this  stage  and  are  certainly  the  least 
provided  for,  indeed  they  are  often  discouraged  owing 
to  fear  of  possible  evil  results.  But  the  effect  of  the  dis- 
couragement of  reasonable  human  intercourse  is  to  reduce 
the  adolescent  to  a  sort  of  solitary  confinement  in  a 
crowd,  and  to  leave  full  scope  for  the  more  sentimental 
admirations  which  flourish  wherever  human  beings  live 
together  without  proper  opportunities  for  genuine  com- 
panionship. Moreover  friendship  offers  a  natural  outlet 
for  ideas  which  might  otherwise  become  morbid,  and  is 
likely  to  prove  a  corrective  to  the  adolescent's  tendency 
to  think  himself  abnormal  and  peculiar.  And  again,  to 
guard  against  possible  sentimentality  and  moodiness  by 
occupying  the  boy  or  girl  perpetually,  though  it  may 
serve  to  deaden  idiosyncrasies  and  may  be  necessary  in 
some  abnormally  ^developed  cases,  is  for  the  most  part  a 
method  of  saving  trouble  to  the  educator  rather  than  a 


134      BEARINGS   OF   MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

real  solution  of  the  problem.  Given  a  suitable  environ- 
ment and  suitable  help  and  teaching  the  adolescent 
will  occupy  himself  eagerly  enough.  But  in  addition  to 
this  he  needs  time  for  thought  and  even  for  occasional 
brooding  or  moodiness,  as  well  as  time  for  friendship,  if 
he  is  to  attain  his  fullest  development.  And  the  boy  or 
girl  who  passes  through  adolescence  without  time  for 
these  things  is  so  far  the  poorer  and  more  humdrum  for 
the  rest  of  his  or  her  life.  As  in  other  human  enterprises, 
something  must  be  risked  in  order  to  secure  the  best. 

4.  Fourthly,  the  constructive  or  creative  instinct  is 
normally  reinforced  and  widened  and  should  be  available 
to  supply  the  boy  or  girl  with  some  means  of  self-expres- 
sion. Self-expression  is  generally  recognised  as  an  im- 
portant need  in  young  children.  It  is  no  less  important 
for  the  adolescent,  but  until  lately  this  has  been  little 
realised  and  even  now  but  small  provision  is  made  for 
it  in  ordinary  school  life.  Most  of  the  forms  of  expression 
which  have  proved  valuable  in  the  history  of  the  race  will 
prove  valuable  now.  The  utilitarian  arts,  such  as  car- 
pentry, cookery  and  needlework,  play  their  part,  but  in 
addition  the  adolescent  should  have  had  sufficient 
practice  and  training  in  drawing,  painting,  modelling, 
writing  poetry  and  prose,  dancing  and  music  to  enable 
him  to  turn  to  one  at  least  of  these  to  express  himself 
and  to  satisfy  his  emotional  needs. 

In  the  past  instruction  in  these  arts  has  been  too 
mechanical  and  too  much  designed  to  develop  technical 
skill  to  prove  effective  for  any  but  a  few  exceptional 
pupils.     What  is  needed  is  a  continuance  of  the  free 


SPECIAL  STUDIES  :    ADOLESCENCE         135 

expressive  art  of  children,  supplemented  by  such  help  in 
technique  as  the  pupil  himself  feels  the  need  of.  The 
picture  or  model  should  always  be  something  that  he 
himself  wishes  to  draw  or  make,  and  it  should  be  judged, 
if  judgment  be  necessary,  not  as  an  imitation  of  reality, 
but  for  its  freedom  and  vigour  of  form  or  colouring.  In 
music  and  dancing  great  advance  may  be  hoped  from  the 
work  of  Dalcroze  and  others  in  eurhythmic  training. 
This  may  not  only  lead  to  widely  increased  pleasure  in 
and  appreciation  of  rhythm  in  all  its  forms,  but  may 
help  those  who  lack  time  or  opportunity  for  special  study 
of  music  to  find  a  means  of  expression  for  latent  musical 
ability. 

In  all  cases  these  arts  should  be  taught  frankly  and 
avowedly  as  a  means  of  giving  pleasure  to  the  '  artist,' 
and  it  should  be  acknowledged  that  the  quality  of  the 
work  is  a  minor  consideration  since  genuine  artistic 
ability  will  probably  always  be  rare.  This  change  of 
standpoint  need  involve  no  greater  demand  for  time  in 
schools.  Indeed  it  may  result  in  a  decreased  demand 
since,  if  the  method  be  successful  in  its  aim,  the  children 
will  take  a  sufficient  pleasure  in  their  productions  to  find 
their  own  time  for  a  great  part  of  the  work,  and  will 
carry  it  on  naturally  into  their  adolescence  when  it  is 
more  particularly  needed  as  a  means  of  self-expression. 

5.  Finally  the  adolescent,  boy  or  girl,  is  proverbially 
'  difficult  to  manage.'  It  is  not  so  much  that  he  is  in- 
subordinate, though  that  too  may  be  the  case,  as  that  he 
subordinates  himself  blindly  to  his  own  chosen  leaders 
and  ideals,  and  that  these  are  frequently  not  the  leaders 


136      BEARINGS   OF   MODERN   PSYCHOLOGY 

or  ideals  approved  of  by  his  parents  and  teachers.  It  is 
in  this  connection  that  we  see  the  danger  referred  to  in 
a  previous  chapter,  of  a  discouragement  of  reasonable 
discussion  about  problems  of  religion  and  morality. 
Where  the  child  has  not  been  used  to  friendly  discussion 
the  boy  and  girl  will  certainly  shun  it,  with  the  result 
that  they  must  be  left  to  fight  their  own  mental  and  moral 
battles  without  aid  unless  from  their  contemporaries, 
whose  views  are  probably  no  less  chaotic  than  their  own. 
Much  of  adolescent  discipline  should,  indeed,  be  foreseen 
and  prepared  for  throughout  childhood.  It  might  then 
generally,  as  in  some  rare  cases  it  now  does,  consist  in  a 
frank  and  friendly  admittance  of  the  boy's  right  to  his 
own  views  and,  above  all,  an  increased  freedom  in  many 
directions,  with  its  attendant  responsibilities.  And  the 
more  the  boy  has  been  practised  in  the  right  use  of  free- 
dom in  his  childhood  the  less  likely  is  he  to  abuse  it  now. 

Moreover,  elders  must  beware  of  rashly  running 
counter  to  the  instinctive  impulses  which  are  now  so 
strong.  Parents,  for  instance,  seem  often  blissfully 
ignorant  of  the  storm  of  passionate  anger  and  even . 
hatred  which  they  may  arouse  by  foolish  criticism  of 
their  children's  friends.  Yet  disagreement  on  this  point 
is  not  infrequently  the  origin  of  a  more  or  less  serious 
and  permanent  estrangement. 

The  temporary  instabilities  which  lead  to  '  adolescent 
crime  '  must  also  be  noticed  in  connection  with  discipline. 
How  frequent  these  are  it  is  at  present  difficult  to 
determine,  but  it  is  clear  that,  for  instance,  tendencies 
to  kleptomania  and  various  forms  of  burglary  are  common 


SPECIAL   STUDIES  :     ADOLESCENCE         137 

enough  and  passing  enough  to  deserve  lenient  treatment 
when  they  are  discovered.  In  some  cases  the  boy  or 
girl  '  idealises  '  the  crime  and  pictures  himself  as  a  sort 
of  hero  of  romance.  In  other  cases  he  is  bitterly  ashamed 
of  the  impulse,  to  which  he  yet  feels  forced  to  yield. 
Still  more  serious  is  the  tendency  to  suicidal  mania, 
probably  far  more  common  than  is  apparent,  and  due 
sometimes  to  excessive  self-depreciation  and  over- 
sensitiveness,  and  sometimes  to  a  specific  disappointment 
or  grief.  In  only  exceptional  cases  probably  is  it  actually 
dangerous,  more  often  it  is  merely  paralysing.  But  in 
all  its  forms  it  seems  responsible  for  a  genuinely  intense 
misery,  from  which  some  boys  and  girls  at  any  rate  might 
be  saved  by  a  more  sympathetic  treatment. 

In  conclusion  we  may  insist  on  what  has  already  been 
implied  that  the  sort  of  dicta  found  in  some  educational 
books,  such  as  "  keep  the  adolescent  fully  occupied," 
"  cultivate  the  normal,"  "  guard  against  all  tendencies 
to  morbid  development,"  while  they  seem  to  follow  the 
dictates  of  common  sense  are  somewhat  lacking  in  imagina- 
tion and  in  a  full  understanding  of  the  problem.  Adoles- 
cence is  the  one  brief  period  of  our  lives  when  each  one 
of  us  apparently  has  the  chance  of  being  a  little  of  the 
genius,  a  little  of  the  artist  and  a  little  of  the  hero. 
Such  dicta,  if  they  could  be  strictly  carried  out,  would 
deprive  our  children  of  some  of  the  most  glorious  and 
most  fundamentally  profitable  moments  of  their  lives. 


OUTLINE 


I.    THE  NATURE  OF  INSTINCT 

1.  The  fundamental  importance  of  instincts       ....  g 

2.  An  older  view  of  instincts lo 

3.  Characteristic  features  of  instinctive  action    ....  11 

a.  Instincts  are  inherited 11 

h.  Instincts  determine  attention        11 

c.  Instincts  arouse  emotion  and  cause  action      ...  12 

4.  Their  special  importance  for  teachers 13 

a.  Stimuli  in  relation  to  attention 13 

b.  Instinctive  behavior  and  personal  responsibility  .     .  14 

c.  The  control  of  instinctive  action 14 

5.  The  teacher's  attitude  toward  instinct        16 

a.  Instincts  as  the  basis  of  activity 16 

h.  Provision  for  their  legitimate  expression     .     .     .     .  16 

c.  The  need  of  greater  freedom  in  school  life      ...  18 

d.  Self-direction  as  effective  freedom iq 

6.  Useful  classifications  of  instincts       20 

7.  Primary  importance  of  play  in  child  life 21 

8.  Individual  differences  in  instinctive  equipment   ...  23 

9.  Changes  in  our  conception  of  discipline 23 

10.  Government  by  the  teacher 24 

11.  Nature  and  function  of  punishment 25 

12.  The  use  of  self-government 25 

13.  The  necessity  for  positive  discipline 27 


140  OUTLINE 

II.    THE   MODIFICATION   OF   INSTINCTS: 
PURPOSIVE  ACTION 

1.  Three  factors  in  the  instinctive  process 28 

2.  Stimulus  and  reaction  specially  subject  to  change   .     .  28 

3.  The  variability  of  instinctive  reactions 29 

4.  Instinctive  reactions  soon  become  habitual     ....  30 

5.  Direct  and  indirect  methods  of  modifying  instincts  .     .  32 

6.  Controlling  the  instinct  of  curiosity ;i3 

7.  Developing  the  constructive  instinct 35 

8.  Two  points  of  view  in  modifying  instincts      ....  37 

9.  The  purposiveness  of  all  instinctive  action     ....  38 
a.  Early  and  later  stages 38 

10.  Characteristics  of  purposive  action 41 

a.  The  purpose  is  the  child's  own 41 

b.  Education  is  more  rapid  in  the  pursuit  of  one's  own 
ends 41 

c.  Knowledge  thus  acquired  is  readily  retained  ...  42 

d.  The  discipline  of  difficulties  is  adequate     ....  42 

11.  The  teacher's  part  in  the  development  of  children's 

purposes 42 

c.  The  proportioned  use  of  individualistic  and  social 

instincts 42 

b.  The  use  of  varied  resources  with  diflerent  children  .  44 


III.     THE  MODIFICATION  OF   INSTINCTS: 
MENTAL  GROWTH 

1 .  The  effect  of  activity  on  perception       46 

2.  Activity  and  attention  are  selective 48 

3.  The  fallacy  of  formal  training 50 

4.  Practical  suggestions  for  the  teacher 50 

a.  Provide  ample  opportunity  for  the  development  of 

wide  interests 5° 


OUTLINE  141 

b.  See  that  the  child's  interests  and  activities  work 
progressively 51 

c.  Direct  the  child  in  the  face  of  difficulties   ....     53 

d.  Keep  the  permanently  useful  interests  free  from 
distraction  and  over-stimulation 56 

e.  Distinguish  between  immediate  and  mediate  inter- 
ests in  work 57 

/.  Provide  practice  in  the  choice  of  occupations  for 

leisure  time 59 

5.  Some  needed  changes  in  classroom  technique  ....     60 

IV.     THE  GROWTH  OF   HABITS  AND 
SENTIMENTS 

1.  The  nature  of  habits       63 

a.  Habits   are   formed   in   close   connection  with  in- 
stincts         64 

b.  Habits  are  also  the  result  of  purposive  action  ...  64 

c.  Habits  may  be  deliberately  formed  by  voluntary 
repetition 67 

d.  Habits  are  acquired  inadvertently 70 

2.  Methodsof  attacking  "bad"  habits 71 

3.  The  nature  of  the  sentiments        72 

4.  Relatively    permanent    attitudes    develop    slowly    in 
connection  with  acti\nties 73 

a.  Effective   training   connected   with   understanding 
and  desire 74 

b.  The  growth  of  sentiments  as  related  to  individuals, 
groups,  and  abstract  values 76 

V.     ENVIRONMENT  AND  SUGGESTION 

1.  The  convenience  of  distinguishing  influence  of  environ- 

ment from  that  of  teacher -  •     78 

2.  The  relation  of  environment  to  heredity 79 


142  OUTLINE 

3.  The  educator's  need  to  improve  environment     ...    80 

a.  Some  defects  of  home  environments 80 

b.  Some  defects  of  school  environments 80 

4.  Direct    teaching    and    suggestion    must    supplement 
supervision  of  environment 85 

5.  The  nature  of  suggestion,  imitation,  and  sympathy  .     .  85 

6.  Conditions  affecting  the  conveyance  of  suggested  ideas  87 

7.  Suggestibility  and  contra-suggestibility  of  children  .     .  87 

8.  Obvious  dangers  in  the  use  of  suggestion 89 

9.  The  encouragement  of  reason  and  independent  thought 

as  a  main  end .     .    92 

VI.    EXPERIMENT  IN  EDUCATION 

1.  The  importance  of  experimental  education     ....  95 

2.  The  empirical  quality  of  educational  theory  ....  95 

3.  The  practical  attitude  of  the  teacher 96 

4.  The  characteristic  features  of  scientific  experiment  in 

education 97 

a.  Adequate  knowledge  of  influencing  conditions  is 

necessary 99 

h.  Cases  selected  for  study  should  be  fair  samples  .     .101 

c.  Experiment  is  only  a  part  of  general  educational 
science 102 

d.  Mathematical  and  statistical  science  add  to  accuracy  108 

VII.     SPECIAL  STUDIES  IN  CONNECTION 
WITH  MEMORY 

1.  The  nature  of  memory iii 

2.  Memory  power  varies  with  subject  matter     .    .     .     .112 

3.  Memories  vary  in  type 114 

4.  The  uses  of  memory  images 116 

5.  The  functioning  of  memories 121 

6.  Rote  learning  and  rational  methods  in  training  the 
memory 124 


OUTLINE  143 

VIII.     SPECIAL  STUDIES  IN  CONNECTION 
WITH   ADOLESCENCE 

1.  Typical  methods  of  studying  adolescence        .     .     .     .126 

2.  The  difficulties  of  dealing  with  the  adolescent  period   .  127 

3.  The  age  boundaries  of  adolescence 127 

4.  Its  mental  and  moral  characteristics 128 

a.  Sex  instinct  and  its  emotional  effects 129 

b.  The  widening  and  intensif^'ing  of  curiosity     .     .     .131 

c.  The  accentuation  of  the  social  instincts     .     .     .    -  13^ 

d.  The  reinforcement  of  the  constructive  and  creative 
instinct 134 

e.  The  difficulty  of  "managing"  adolescents      .     .     .  135 


RIVERSIDE    EDUCATIONAL   MONOGRAPHS 

Edited  by  HENRY  SUZZALLO 

Atwood's  The  Theory  and  Practice  of  the  Kindergarten  $  .70 
Bailey's  Art  Education  .70 
Belts 's  New  Ideals  in  Rural  Schools  .70 
Betts's  The  Recitation  .70 
Bloomfield's  Vocational  Guidance  of  Youth  .70 
Cabot's  Volunteer  Help  to  the  Schools  .70 
Campagnac's  The  Teaching  of  Composition  .40 
Cole's  Industrial  Education  in  Elementary  Schools  .40 
Cooky's  Language  Teaching  in  the  Grades  .40 
Cubberley's  Changing  Conceptions  of  Education  .40 
Cubberley's  The  Improvement  of  Rural  Schools  .40 
Dewey's  Interest  and  Effort  in  Education  .70 
Dewey's  Moral  Principles  in  Education  ,40 
Dooley's  The  Education  of  the  Ne'er-Do- Well  .70 
Earhart's  Teaching  Children  to  Study  .70 
Eliot's  Education  for  Efficiency  .40 
.  Eliot's  Concrete  and  Practical  in  Modern  Education  .40 
■  Emerson's  Education  .40 
Evans's  The  Teaching  of  High  School  Mathematics  .40 
Fairchild's  The  Teaching  of  Poetry  in  the  High  School  .70 
Fiske's  The  Meaning  of  Infancy  .40 
Freeman's  The  Teaching  of  Handwriting  .70 
Haliburton  and  Smith's  Teaching  Poetry  in  the  Grades  .70 
Hartwell's  The  Teaching  of  History  .40 
Haynes's  Economics  in  the  Secondary  School  .70 
Hill's  The  Teaching  of  Civics  .70 
Home's  The  Teacher  as  Artist  .40 
Hyde's  The  Teacher's  Philosophy  .40 
Jenkins's  Reading  in  the  Primary  Grades  .70 
Kilpatrick's  The  Montessori  System  Examined  .40 
Leonard's  English  Composition  as  a  Social  Problem  .70 
Lewis's  Democracy's  High  School  .70 
Meredith's  The  Educational  Bearings  of  Modern  Psy- 
chology .70 
Palmer's  Ethical  and  Moral  Instruction  in  the  Schools  .40 
Palmer's  Self-Cultivation  in  English  .40 
Palmer's  The  Ideal  Teacher  .40 
Palmer's  Trades  and  Professions  .40 
Perry's  Status  of  the  Teacher  .40 
Prosser's  The  Teacher  and  Old  Age  .70 
Russell's  Economy  in  Secondary  Education  .40 
Smith's  Establishing  Industrial  Schools  .70 
Snedden's  The  Problem  of  Vocational  Education  .40 
Suzzallo's  The  Teaching  of  Primary  Arithmetic  .70 
Suzzallo's  The  Teaching  of  Spelling  .70 
Terman's  The  Teacher's  Health  .70 
Thorndike's  Individuality  .40 
Trowbridge's  The  Home  School  .70 
Weeks's  The  People's  School  .70 

2516 


THE  HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN 
PROFESSIONAL  LIBRARY 

For  Teachers  and  Students  of  Education 


THEORY  AND  PRINCIPLES  OF  EDUCATION 

Postpaid 

McMurry's  (F.  M.)   How  to  Study  and  Teaching 

How  to  Study $1-25 

McMurry's    (C.    A.)     Conflicting    Principles   in 

Teaching 1.35 

KiRKPA trick's  Fundamentals  of  Sociology  ...  1.35 

Kirkpatrick's  The  Individual  in  the  Making  .     .  1.35 

Ruediger's  The  Principles  of  Education      .     .     ,  1.^5 

Hanus's  Beginnings  in  Industrial  Education     .     .  i.oo 

O'Shea's  Social  Development  and  Education    .     .  2.00 

Tyler's  Growth  and  Education 1.50 

Henderson's  Education  and  the  Larger  Life    .     .  1.30 

Draper's  American  Education 2.00 

Chancellor's  A  Theory  of  Motives,  Ideals  and 

Values  in  Education       2.00 

PRACTICAL  ASPECTS  OF  EDUCATION 

Charters's  Teaching  the  Common  Branches   .     .  1.35 

Earhart's  Types  of  Teaching 1.35 

Wilsons'  The  Motivation  of  School  Work    .     .     .  1.35 
Leavitt  and   Brown's    Prevocational  Education 

in  the  Public  Schools 1.25 

Hall's  The  Question  as  a  Factor  in  Teaching,     .  1.25 

Kready's  A  Study  of  Fairy  Tales 1.40 

Bryant's  How  to  Tell  Stories  to  Children    .     .     .  i.oo 

Cabot's  Ethics  for  Children 1.35 

Brownlee's  Character  Building  in  School    .     .     .  i.io 

A  Course  in  Citizenship 1.35 

Bloomfield's  Youth,  School,  and  Vocation       .     .  1.35 

Colby's  Literature  and  Life  in  School     ....  1.25 

The  Kindergarten 1.35 

Bates's  Talks  on  Teaching  Literature      ....  1.30 

HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

BOSTON  NEW  YORK  CHICAGO 

i7»3 


/ 


UCLA-Young  Research   Library 

LB1051    .M54 


L  009  565  797  9 


